Lindsey Graham Archives - The Automatic Earth

Had Lindsey Graham not saved the Brett Kavanaugh nomination with his amazing rant in 2018, the Democrats' plan would've worked. The SCOTUS would look much different today, Trump might not have gotten immunity two years ago, and Kamala would probably be your president today! RIP pic.twitter.com/FbJEj7ZSqc
— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) July 12, 2026

https://twitter.com/MAGA__Patriot/status/2076369354485109139?s=20 https://twitter.com/NanLee1124/status/2076144616383103029?s=20

Trump wants no war,

• Trump Formally Notifies Congress Of Iran War Resumption (ZH)

WH Formally Notifies Congress War has Resumed
We are very far past the little “excursion” the administration talked about in the earlier phases of Operation Epic Fury, per reports late this afternoon and early evening: President Trump formally notified Congress last week that the U.S. has resumed military strikes against Iran, providing the Pentagon an extra 60 days to utilize U.S. forces in the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) theater absent congressional approval. Trump told lawmakers in a 2-page letter on Friday that U.S. strikes resumed against Iran on July 7, alerting legislators in line with the War Powers Act, which stipulates the commander-in-chief has to inform Congress within two days of the military conducting kinetic action abroad.

President Trump is still insisting that the US won’t get sucked into a ground war, akin the Iraq or Afghan wars. “United States ground forces are not involved in these strikes. These strikes are limited, measured, planned and executed in a manner designed to minimize civilian casualties,” the president wrote in the letter. Overnight reports say Iran has in turn renewed its retaliation on Gulf allies hosting American bases, especially Bahrain.
Pentagon Announced 3rd Night of Major Strikes
In case anyone had doubts that the region has witnessed a return to full-scale US-Iran war, CENTCOM has announced that it has begun launching the third consecutive night of strikes on Iran in the overnight hours (local):

This as President Trump has claimed Monday that the US had a “deal with [Iran] two days ago” but that Tehran wanted “to negotiate it further”. However when asked by a reporter whether he thinks a negotiated settlement is no longer possible Trump responded: “I never reached that conclusion.” He explained his beleif that the “most effective” way to put pressure on Iran is va a combination of a blockade and “hitting them”. Earlier he and the Pentagon announced that a full blockade of Iranian ports is back on.

JUST IN – US strikes against Iran begin pic.twitter.com/YWCvSepJp8
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) July 13, 2026

“Where do the enemies of our country — including the ones inside our country — get the idea that Iran is winning this war?”

“Persian kings did not build empires by being naive about deception; they practically invented the genre.” —Jesus Enrique Rosas

• Carrot and Stick (James Howard Kunstler)

Where do the enemies of our country — including the ones inside our country — get the idea that Iran is winning this war? They wish it into existence. The wishing is necessary to put across the talking points that President Trump and his advisors don’t have a plan, don’t know what they are doing, that the USA is persecuting and oppressing Iran for no good reason.

We pounded Iran over the weekend for a very good reason: Iran needs to learn the hard way that there are consequences for breaking agreements. For instance, at around 7:15p.m. local time, Iran fired a projectile at the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy, managed by Dubai-based Global Feeder Shipping, in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed it was “a warning shot,” but it was a direct hit on the ship’s engine room, disabling the vessel. The crew had to abandon ship in lifeboats — and were soon rescued by a combination of other commercial ships and Omani navy vessels. One crew member went missing.
Hours after the attack, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. And soon after that, President Trump asserted that the Strait was open to commercial traffic, with US forces positioned to ensure freedom of navigation, contradicting Iran’s announcement of closure “until further notice.”
It’s not the President and his advisors who are confused, it’s the situation, and for a good reason: Iran’s leadership is confused. It’s as if Mr. Trump has to stand between Abbott & Costello doing their Who’s on First routine. All the while the IRGC fulminates and fires what remains of its ordnance at ships and other countries in the region, Iran’s putative civilian leadership, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, and Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, are talking desperately on the phone to mediators in Qatar and Pakistan about how to implement “technical issues” in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
All of this indicates that Iran’s leadership is badly split between its civil government and the IRGC (Revolutionary Guard) forces that operate as a competing Mafia-style command structure with an attached military of its own, separate from Iran’s regular army. The major discord between the two entities is that the civil government would apparently like the conflict with America to resolve in a way that will allow their country to salvage its economy and return to normal relations with the rest of the world, while the IRGC remains obdurately bent on jihad, no matter what it means for their country and its people.
The problem with jihad is that it must be waged against all infidels, meaning the people of Western Civ — a major part of the rest of the world — and now even many states around the Persian Gulf region who have joined President Trump’s Board of Peace — Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan — that might qualify as targets of jihad, too. Why? Because Israel was one of the initial signatories, making the Board of Peace a creature of The Great Satan (the USA) and Little Satan (Israel).
Of course, a key precept in jihad is taqiyya, which prescribes lying and deception in the service of jihad, which further suggests that, for the jihadist IRGC, there can be no real understanding in the Memorandum of Understanding that Iran’s civil government signed. Taqiyya requires the IRGC to lie, which it has demonstrated it is determined to do. . . like, firing missiles at commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz after it promised not to. How can such conduct possibly produce mutual understanding?
And so, if you picture the negotiations as a carrot-and-stick type process, you see that Iran’s IRGC is oblivious to carrots. Only the stick might avail, and Mr. Trump is obliging them with it. By the way, rumors circulated the past twenty-four hours that the IRGC’s newest commander, Ahmad Vahidi, was killed in his bunker by an American bomb over the weekend. True? Dunno. We’ll probably learn soon enough. Vahidi became the IRGC Commander in March of this year after his predecessor, Mohammad Pakpour, was successfully blown up. Who’s available to step-up into the job now? I guess we’ll find that out soon enough, too.
Speaking of targets, we also learned that President Trump was targeted for assassination by Iran (surprise surprise) upon leaving last week’s NATO confab in Turkey — Israeli intel informed him — necessitating that switcheroo between the new Air Force One gifted by Qatar, and the good old baby-blue Air Force One just recently retired from service going all the way back to Bush One. The old plane had better defensive weaponry aboard, our officials explained.
If I were president of our country, at this point in the quarrel with Iran, I’d consider just dropping Graham Platner over Tehran. And if that fails to get their minds right, follow-up with Rosie O’Donnell and Ana Navarro.

US, UK,->Socialism. Takes some getting used to.

• British MP Exposes Secret Society Behind UK’s Lurch Toward Socialism (HUSA)

The stunning transformation of Great Britain in recent years – from a beacon of decorum and stiff upper lips to a cautionary tale of wokeness run amok – has been blamed on everything from socialism to satanism. However, Rupert Lowe, a member of the British Parliament and founder of the organization Restore Britain, said the reality may be even more sinister.

In a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, he said a shadowy group of elites known as the Fabian Society was deliberately trying to wreck the country. “I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Fabian Society, but if you go and have a look at it, it was basically most of the Labour Party for many, many years,” Lowe said, referring to England’s leading left-wing party, the equivalent of U.S. Democrats.

The British people need to understand the powerful malign influence of the Fabian Society. pic.twitter.com/i3uY9sJfj8
— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) July 11, 2026

America’s Left may be facing a similar identity crisis as it tries to shake off the subversive influence of the Justice Democrats, Democrat Socialists of America and other fringe elements that are pushing neo-Marxist ideas. But the British version has been around for nearly 150 years. The club, founded in 1884, was a direct reaction to the philosophy of Karl Marx (who died a year earlier in London). Rather than forcing a collectivist government as Marx suggested, through class struggle — which generally led to uncomfortable outcomes for aristocrats — the society advocated for a socialist society to take root slowly and incrementally.
It was the brainchild of intellectuals including the man who first created “My Fair Lady” heroine Eliza Doolittle — playwright George Bernard Shaw. Science-fiction visionary H.G. Wells also counted himself a member. “It’s the most extraordinary organization,” Lowe told Rogan. “Their emblem is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as if that doesn’t tell you what they’re doing.”Among the beliefs it endorsed was eugenics, the idea of breeding out unwanted attributes through various means, scientific and otherwise.
While the Nazis would go on to run with the idea — and ultimately help to effect its demise — the Fabian Society also was rumored to have inspired author George Orwell, whose dystopian 1984 (written in the late 1940s) was set exactly 100 years after the society’s founding.

The Fabian Society was created in 1884, & why George Orwells book is called 1984, as he figured the Fabian Society would have completed their mission within 100 years.

He was a bit off with the timing, but not with their evil agenda & what they are trying to achieve. pic.twitter.com/70LA5kyaHW
— NWO Dissident 1776. (@An89390Anglo) July 10, 2026

According to Lowe, not all of the society’s ideas have vanished entirely. Rather, some of them simply evolved into a modern political framework. “Everyone should look at the Fabian Society, because that runs deep through the veins of Labour,” he said. Writing for The Telegraph, former Fabian research director Stephen Pollard sought to dismantle the claims by attacking Lowe as a conspiracy theorist. However, his argument may have only helped to make the case for some that “basically what it wants to do is destroy all good and create a dependency culture.”
After defending ideas like eugenics as having been widely accepted in their time, Pollard insisted that the current society was more concerned with selling magazine subscriptions than world domination. Many of its policy papers now deal with addressing the nation’s housing crisis. “To take that and conclude that they are in fact part of a secret cabal dedicated to destroying Britain is not so much misguided as a sign that someone is truly away with the fairies,” he claimed.

“In 1990, manufacturing was the top employment sector in most states[..] Today, healthcare is the nation’s biggest employer..”

• Prescription for a Socialist Workforce (Daniel McCarthy)

America has a socialism problem, and it’s bigger than most citizens realize. When candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America win Democratic party primaries, or New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani hails “the warmth of collectivism,” socialism’s advance is obvious. But it’s making gains in other ways, too, especially in the transformation of America’s workforce — which is coming to be chiefly employed in a sector one step removed from outright government control: healthcare. In 1990, manufacturing was the top employment sector in most states, including New York and California. Today, healthcare is the nation’s biggest employer and is No. 1 in almost every individual state — New York, California, Texas, even Pennsylvania.

When Mary Talley Bowden, the founder of Americans for Health Freedom, posted a chart on X last weekend illustrating this revolution in American labor, it went viral, garnering more than 2.5 million views and eliciting hundreds of follow-up comments. Many noted America hasn’t changed from a nation of makers into a nation of caregivers: Healthcare employment is growing less because we’re adding doctors and nurses than because we’re adding far more administrators. The health workforce contains an army of bureaucrats whose jobs are based on keeping up with government regulation. nThis is the 21st-century twist on socialism: Instead of government owning industry outright, it forces industries to remodel themselves in the shape of Washington’s own bureaucracies.
Healthcare isn’t the only victim of this — compliance bureaucracies and human-resources departments set up to address mountains of federal, state and local regulations have taken root everywhere. But healthcare is special: It’s not only more heavily regulated than other fields, it’s tied to the massive entitlement systems of Medicare and Medicaid, and a host of lesser programs as well. The socialists who are an increasingly powerful bloc in the Democratic Party aren’t content with the slow conversion of American healthcare into a quasi-public sector, however. They’re eager to expand Medicare into “Medicare for All,” and many still dream of outright nationalization of medicine, on the model of Britain’s National Health Service.
Whether the takeover occurs gradually through regulation or suddenly at a stroke, the consequences of merging of healthcare and government are monumental for social values as well the economy: Progressives see gaining power over medicine as a shortcut to winning battles over abortion, euthanasia, biological sex and gender, and much else. And the more Americans are made dependent on government — for their health or their jobs — the less free they are to vote against the people running the system. The Trump administration’s efforts to bring back manufacturing jobs are, among other things, an attempt to restore balance and freedom to our economy.
Tariffs that stop foreign producers from flooding the American market are just a first step, one that has to be coupled with creating a competitive environment for domestic firms. A multiplicity of domestic producers keeps prices down — and gives workers a choice of employer, as companies must compete to offer the best wages and benefits. Workers well-paid in the private sector, whose jobs are helped by protection but not merely a byproduct of government regulation — like the growing healthcare bureaucracy — are secure enough to exercise political choice, too. Yet too many old-guard Republicans and libertarians are so repulsed by tariffs that they fail to see how much worse the alternative is.

Won’t he just go crazier?

• Mamdani’s Affordability Agenda Flops As NYC Rents Surge To Record Highs (ZH)

New York City’s socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and his radical-left lieutenants in City Hall promised voters free bus rides, government-run grocery stores, cheap housing, and much more. Yet the dream of a left-wing utopia has not materialized. In fact, rents in the NYC metro area just hit a record high.New data from The Corcoran Group, a major residential real estate brokerage founded in NYC, shows that rents in the metro area have climbed to a new record high. Manhattan’s median rent rose 8% from a year earlier to $5,295, while Brooklyn reached $4,350, also up 8%, according to the report. Manhattan’s vacancy rate narrowed to 1.49%. In Queens, Rego Park posted particularly sharp increases, with one-bedroom rents up 12% and studio rents up more than 20%.

“Manhattan renters are chasing a shrinking pool of available apartments, and the result has become predictable — record rents. Available listings dropped 16% year-over-year in June, while the borough’s median rent climbed to a new high of $5,295 . Leasing activity clocked in 7% below last year’s pace due to the lack of inventory, causing competition to remain fierce. Additionally, June marked one year since implementation of the FARE Act, a milestone that may still be influencing pricing trends, particularly within the non-doorman market. Across the board, quality apartments are commanding a premium, and renters have little room to negotiate,” Corcoran COO Gary Malin wrote in the report.
Malin continued, “Brooklyn’s rental market is also rewriting the record books. Median rent jumped 8% year-over-year to an all-time high of $4,350 and apartments spent 30% fewer days on the market. This steep annual decline underscores how tight the market has become, with flat inventory and strong demand strong causing available units to rent far faster than a year ago. While lease signings were lower on an annual basis, activity picked up from May as renters moved quickly to secure apartments ahead of the busiest stretch of the summer season. Throughout the borough, competition.”
City Comptroller Mark Levine commented on the new report, saying, “NYC’s housing affordability crisis is at DEFCON 1. We need to push harder on every front to address our housing shortage.” “Update zoning, invest more City $ in affordable units, lower the time & cost City bureaucracy imposes on construction, get 1000s of vacant regulated units back on the market. We need bold action. This is a crisis,” Levine added.

Rents in NYC have just hit an all-time high.

Median market rate in June…

Manhattan: $5,295/mo (+8.2% year-over-year)

Brooklyn: $4,350 (+8.1%)

NYC’s housing affordability crisis is at DefCon 1. We need to push harder on every front to address our housing shortage.

Update…
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) July 12, 2026

We don’t have a housing shortage. We have an illegal alien invasion https://t.co/4JW59k17Uu
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 13, 2026

Turley attacks Max Blumenthal.

• Will Far-Left Influencers Face Charges in Rallying America’s Enemies? (Turley)

On July 4, 1916, Iva Ikuko Toguri was born in Los Angeles — 25 years before she would go to Japan and become known as the infamous Tokyo Rose during World War II. Roughly one hundred years later, Calla Walsh, 21, has stepped forward as a type of Tehran Rose, cutting propaganda films for one of the most blood-soaked regimes in the world. Walsh appeared at the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and praised him as the “greatest anti-imperialist leader.” Walsh is not alone. Other young Americans have rallied to the anti-American cause. That includes Jackson Hinkle, who appeared on a stage in Tehran, cheering on a crowd chanting “Down with America.”

It also includes Max Blumenthal, 48, the son of Sidney Blumenthal, the columnist who became notorious as the “attack dog” for Bill and Hillary Clinton. While supporting a regime that denies free speech and other human rights to its citizens, they are protected in the U.S. in voicing unpopular views, including denouncing their own nation. The question is where the line is between that and criminal conduct. Walsh, Hinkle and Blumenthal fit a pattern not just as young and privileged radicals, often downwardly mobile from their parents’ careers and accomplishments, but also as voices groomed by U.S. media culture for years.
Walsh was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Boston University English professor Chris Walsh and Mary Sullivan Walsh, an instructor with Harvard’s Extension School. She was raised a progressive Brahman. The media fawned over the radical college dropout as an exciting new voice. The New York Times gushed over her, and Teen Vogue published her screed in favor of socialism.She would work on the campaigns of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. (Her work on the campaigns drew gushing reviews in The New York Times and Boston Magazine).
Hinkle was also celebrated by the media after he embraced socialism and then communism. Born in San Clemente, California, he was named one of “The 17 Most Inspirational Kids of 2017” by Reader’s Digest. As with Walsh, he was featured in Teen Vogue as an inspirational young activist. In a Los Angeles Times article, he was described by a source as “the kind of guy who gives you hope about the future … Jackson is fearless and well-informed.” Today, he is a vocal supporter not only of Iran’s regime but also of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its war against Ukraine.
The scion of the Democratic establishment, Blumenthal attended the exclusive Georgetown Day School in Washington and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. His connections gave him immediate access to elite publications. He wrote books denouncing Israel and espousing increasingly radicalized values. He also wrote far-left columns for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Liberal websites, including The Nation, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post, featured his work. He is viewed as an apologist for regimes fighting the U.S., often dismissing atrocities committed by countries such as Syria and Russia. (His father, Sidney Blumenthal, sent Hillary Clinton roughly two dozen of his son’s columns. Hillary responded with such praise as “Max strikes again!” and “He’s so good.”)
All three are examples of today’s radical chic in media and higher education, all given platforms as influencers. And there are thousands like Walsh, Hinkle, and Blumenthal. Indeed, our colleges are cranking out radicalized young people who have a paucity of job prospects but an abundance of rage. Recently, a Fourth of July event captured this culture in Chicago. The event featured Bill Ayers, a former professor, former fugitive, and one of the founders of the domestic terrorist organization, the Weather Underground.
The other speaker was Princeton’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a chaired professor in the African-American Studies department and a writer for the New Yorker. Taylor delighted the young audience by saying that they were all part of the “F— the U.S.” crowd and called on others to reject “the idea of loving a nation state, which is what patriotism is.” She repeatedly returned to the theme that borders are “deadly” and “borders kill people,” denouncing all borders as “a tool of death and destruction.”
Walsh’s emergence as a face of Iranian propaganda raises striking parallels to Toguri, who was arrested and convicted of treason after World War II. She was actually just one of several women who participated in the infamous propaganda radio programs for the Japanese military. The difference is that Toguri, whom President Gerald Ford later pardoned, may have been an unwilling participant in the programs. Unlike Walsh, Toguri was effectively trapped in Japan after the U.S. refused to recognize her citizenship, preventing her from returning home to California.
Toguri was effectively destitute, subjected to cruel treatment by the Japanese. She insisted that she had been coerced into reading anti-American scripts and that even then she refused to attack the United States in her programs. Walsh was not just a willing participant; she is a raving anti-Semitic ally to the Iranians — and seemingly any country that can do harm to the U.S.

“Moodys: Without U.S Military Leading Europe,…”

“EU Sovereign Countries” have no armies to defend themselves.

• Without US, Credit Rating for EU Sovereign Countries Will be Lowered (CTH)

Essentially this notice can be summarized as follows: If you really end the Marshall Plan, credit rating agencies will have to lower their credit rating for all of Europe due to increased financial risk. Now, tell me again how Europe is not living on the back of America.

LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) Progressive U.S. disengagement from European security affairs is negative for Europe’s sovereign credit ratings, Moody’s said on Monday, due the increased defence costs the region’s governments will now face.
A summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)) in Turkey last week saw its 32 member countries agree to shift the balance of responsibility for Europe’s defence to the alliance’s European members, and away from the United States. The (U.S.) disengagement is credit negative for European sovereigns, a report by two of Moody s top rating analysts said. It said the credit effect would depend on how the shift was managed in the coming years
When it comes to irony, Emmanuel Macron has, quite possibly, the world’s worst timing.

“Governments have refused to respect the wishes of their citizens…”

• Open Borders Are a Death Sentence to Western Nations (J.B. Shurk)

As simmering conflicts between Western citizens and Western governments boil over the next few years, we must never forget how we got to this point: Elected officials and irremovable bureaucrats occupying permanent administrative roles have refused to respect the wishes of the citizens whom they ostensibly represent and serve. From the United States to the United Kingdom, citizens have demanded that their governments secure national borders and end the steady flow of illegal aliens into their communities. From France, the Netherlands, and Germany to Australia and New Zealand, citizens have demanded that their governments arrest and remove Islamic immigrants who are guilty of rape, murder, or other violent crimes.

With the exception of President Trump’s efforts to enforce immigration law and deport illegal alien criminals (despite formidable resistance from the courts, leftist NGOs, and Establishment politicians from both the Democrat and Republican Parties) in the United States, no Western official has done anything to remedy the scourge of unlawful mass invasion in a deliberate, meaningful, and effective way. Instead, Western governments hide from their citizens the true number of illegal immigrants living among them. Western governments hide from their citizens a full accounting of the crimes committed by foreign nationals who should never have been permitted entry in the first place.
Mass illegal immigration is not a new problem. In the United States, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act into law in 1986. Defended by both political parties as a way of combating illegal immigration while providing long-term lawbreakers legal status, it effectively awarded millions of foreign nationals amnesty. Politicians convinced the American people to support this trade-off: In return for citizens’ reluctantly permitting the government to reward the unlawful behavior of foreign immigrants who had no right to reside in the United States, the government would protect citizens by cracking down on future illegal immigration and punishing businesses that hired illegal immigrant workers. The U.S. government never lived up to its side of the bargain.
Instead, U.S. officials have lied to their citizens for forty additional years. Until President Trump entered office, U.S. borders were not secured. Businesses were rarely punished for hiring illegal aliens. Unbeknownst to most American citizens, State and federal welfare programs continued to add illegal aliens to their taxpayer-funded dole rolls. School districts in both cities and small towns continued to enroll illegal alien children. Hospital emergency rooms continued to overflow with illegal alien patients seeking “free” medical care. American jobs — especially blue-collar jobs — continued to go to illegal aliens because employers could pay foreigners less, avoid state and federal taxes, and use the threat of deportation as exploitative leverage over their workforces.
Illegal alien workers continued to place downward pressure on hourly wages. Illegal aliens continued to place upward pressure on the costs of housing, energy, and household necessities. Sometime in the ‘90s, American politicians and government bureaucrats began admitting to Americans that there were roughly eleven million illegal aliens inside the United States. For the next thirty years, politicians and bureaucrats repeated the same “eleven million” figure as if no net-increase in immigration had occurred. Anybody living in small-town America knew this to be a demonstrable lie. In the nineties, local school classrooms were made up almost entirely of American kids who grew up speaking English in households whose families had been living in the United States for generations.
As each year passed, those same classrooms were increasingly filled with kids whose parents had come from all over the world, and even small school districts were forced to hire staff who could attend to the needs of an increasingly foreign student body unfamiliar with basic English. Former Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino has said repeatedly that there are more than one hundred million illegal aliens residing in the United States. In other words, roughly one out of every three people living inside the borders of the U.S. is a foreign national unlawfully here. If those foreign nationals are employed, then they are likely guilty of identity fraud and committing a number of additional state and federal crimes.
Of those committing identity fraud, many are using social security numbers stolen from American citizens. Illegal aliens who steal Americans’ identities adversely affect citizens’ credit scores, tax obligations with the IRS, and background checks. Illegal aliens who fraudulently vote by claiming to be American citizens steal votes from actual American citizens. Foreign nationals who illegally vote in American elections deny American citizens legitimate representation and undermine Americans’ constitutional form of self-government.
In 1986, lawmakers from both parties promised an end to illegal immigration. Instead, tens of millions of new illegal aliens have continued to arrive. In return for grudgingly acceding to the government’s desire to provide a one-time gift of amnesty to those foreigners whose first act in the country was to break our immigration laws, Americans continued to lose jobs, pay more for everything, and be defrauded by identity theft. Even worse, they were forced to watch as foreign cultures transformed their schools and towns. They were forced to watch as foreigners successfully ran for political office and pushed foreign policies and beliefs upon American citizens.
New York City has a Muslim mayor from Uganda who has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for only eight years. Minneapolis has a Muslim member of Congress from Somalia who became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of seventeen.
Roughly 4% of Congress are foreign-born naturalized citizens, while 15% of Congress have at least one immigrant parent. A third of the judges occupying prestigious and powerful positions on the D.C. District Courts were born in foreign nations. These numbers are going in one direction — up!

In some instances, for sure.

• American Democracy Has Proven Itself to Be a Fraud (Paul Craig Roberts)

In my younger days conservatives and libertarians contrasted government unfavorably with private business. Government consisted of black hat guys and business of white hat guys. If government won, tyranny would be the result. If business won, liberty would stay alive. Conservatives and libertarians saw power as something that government wanted, but not business. There was no room for power in private life where business governed by competition competed for the consumer’s dollar. In the business sector, the people were king. In the government sector bureaucracies wrested power away from the people.

This was the narrative, and the US Chamber of Commerce kept it alive. For awhile I thought this way myself. Liberals reinforced the narrative, because they always wanted more power for government to rein in private sector wrongs. Liberals were perceived by conservatives and libertarians as wanting to transfer power from citizens to government regulators. It didn’t take me long to see that this narrative had problems. If it were true, what explained the success of business lobbies that lined K Street in Washington, D.C.? You didn’t have to open your eyes very wide to see, for example, agri-business use an alleged oil crisis to collect a federal corn subsidy to dilute gasoline with 10% of ethanol made from corn.
The federal regulatory agencies that were created in the 1930s all ended up in the hands of the business interests that they were supposed to regulate. Think, for example, of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which the pharmaceutical industry turned into a shill for its interests. The way modern capitalism works, if capitalism it still is, is by corporate pacs purchasing with political campaign contributions the House and Senate and then handing to committee chairmen laws that they want passed. As a person who has served on House and Senate staffs, both personal staffs and committee staffs, I have experienced the process.
Some years ago Congress passed a law, pretending to show its opposition to big business, that if a corporation paid an executive more than one million dollars, it could not be deducted as a business expense unless the pay was “performance related.” To be performance related means it has to result in higher profits, which supposedly serve shareholders but in fact are given to executives and boards in “performance bonuses,” the main source of their pay, and to shareholders in the form of higher stock prices. Once this law was passed, anything that reduced costs increased profits and thereby executive pay.
The easiest way to increase profits is to lower labor costs. There are four ways of doing this. One is to move manufacturing jobs offshore where labor is cheaper. Another is for corporations to claim falsely that there is a shortage of American labor and to get H1-B and L-1 visas approved to bring in cheaper foreign labor to displace American workers. Another is to replace humans with AI and robotics. Another is to move back office operations and consumer service to countries where wages are low. The most visible are the work visa entrants into the United States.
When the corrupt US Congress passed the law that enables US corporations to fire their US work force and replace it with imported non-American labor, a few members who still represented Americans instead of corporations put into the law that the visa programs depended on corporations being unable to find American workers.
There were unlimited amounts of American workers available , including those abandoned by US corporations who took their production for US markets offshore to lower paid foreign labor. But American law firms rushed to hide the availability of American workers. For example, the law firm Cohen & Grigsby used a marketing video to demonstrate how the firm could enable clients to evade the restrictions on replacing their American workers with imported foreigners on work visas. Hire us, said the law firm’s marketing manager, and we promise “not to find a qualified and interested US worker.”
My book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, published by Clarity Press 13 years ago exposed the scheme that the US President, the US House, the US Senate, the US whore media, and the US whore economics profession perpetuated in order to transfer the earnings of middle class blue collar American workers into multi-million dollar bonuses for corrupt US corporate executives in the form of totally fake “performance bonuses.” The only “performance” was the success of the lie, aided and abetted by such US firms as Cohen & Grigsby. Wall Street shared with corporate executives the responsibility for replacing US workers by threatening corporations with takeovers if they did not take advantage of opportunities to lower labor costs.
The latest news is that Microsoft after receiving approval for thousands of visas for foreign workers laid off 6,400 Americans in order to make room for their foreign replacements. The difference in labor costs go directly into the pockets of the Microsoft executives. Clearly American Capitalism No longer serves American citizens. Why haven’t Americans organized boycotts of their products. Why do Americans support firms that force social costs on them?
Economists who shill for jobs offshoring and work visas claim that it is necessary if US corporations are to compete. However, the US market is large enough to support successful companies, and it was the offshoring of manufacturing jobs to China that transferred the technology and business know-how that gave rise to foreign competition. Think about it, even today what competition does Microsoft and Apple, for example, have?

Individuals. Nothing of any scale.

“..as DOJ speeds crackdown Trump DOJ has secured about two dozen noncitizen voting arrests, prosecutions or convictions in the last few months, with about another 90 more cases under investigation.

• Evidence Mounts of Noncitizens Reaching Voter Rolls, Casting Ballots (JTN)

A small town Kansas mayor born in Mexico. A Filipino senior citizen living in Hawaii. Two Pakistani men residing in New Jersey. An Aussie in Louisiana. And a Chinese student studying at the University of Michigan. They all have one thing in common. Each has been charged in the last year with illegally voting in U.S. federal elections as foreigners, part of a sudden wave of prosecutions led by the Trump Justice Department for a crime that used to be among the rarest in the federal court system.

The Trump Justice Department has secured about two dozen non-citizens voting arrests, prosecutions or convictions in the last few months alone, with about another 90 more cases under investigation, officials told Just the News. And all 50 states were sent notices this month that election officials can and will be prosecuted too if they allow non-citizens to vote.
“It isn’t just bad policy to let non-citizens vote in federal elections, it’s a crime. And this Department of Justice will intend to prosecute that crime if these election officials, having been informed that they are non-citizens on the voter rolls, knowingly allow those people to vote, enable their enrollment on the voter rolls, are passive in the face of this knowledge, etc. This is not some idle threat,” Assistant Attorney General for Ciril Rights Harmeet Dhillon told the Just the News, No Noise television show.
DOJ officials have found three major problems in policing states’ voter rolls ahead of the 2026 election: hundreds of thousands of dead people still eligible to vote, tens of thousands of illegal aliens on the rolls and scores of foreigners having gone beyond registering to, in fact, vote in a federal election, which is illegal. Dhillon, the top election cop inside the DOJ, believes the numbers of foreigners illicitly voting in elections is probably higher but has been frustrated that U.S. Attorney offices across the country haven’t made illegal voting a larger priority until just recently. “
We are trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon because there isn’t a culture of U.S. attorneys going after these,” she explained. That’s changing with the sudden explosion of cases.Just before the 250th American birthday celebration, three non-United States citizens in Florida confessed to having knowingly voted in federal elections despite not being eligible to do so. Federal law requires voters to be American citizens to vote on the federal level, but some states and cities allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.
The three non-citizens voted in Florida and two of them – one from Cuba and the other from Haiti — admitted to voting in 2020 federal elections. The third, a Brazilian, voted in a federal election in 2024 after becoming a lawful permanent resident. “Voting in federal elections is one of the most important rights and responsibilities of American citizenship,” U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “Federal law is clear: only United States citizens may vote in federal elections. These defendants admitted that they knowingly violated that law.”

“Normal people would be ashamed to be seen with him, dead or alive; Western elites are boasting of how close to him they were.. “

• Lindsey Graham Was A Monster, But Not Exceptional (Amar)

Lindsey Graham is dead. And if we were to apply the old Spartan and then Roman adage “about the dead, nothing but the good,” then this is where this text would have to end. Some readers may find this shocking or unkind. But it is a fact that there is no way to write about the intriguingly sudden end of the long-term US senator from South Carolina in a ‘balanced’ manner and stay honest. Graham was an almost cartoonishly evil man and since he was also very powerful, his moral depravity made a big difference to the lives of all too many.

Downplaying that fact out of misplaced piety would be perverse; it would mean to disrespect the many victims of perfidious and brutal US and, in fact, Israeli policies of vicious violence and outrageous injustice that Graham promoted with every fiber of his being for his whole political life. During the Gaza genocide, when challenged specifically about the Israeli mass killings of civilians, including women and children, Graham launched into what can only be called a psychopathic rant comparing the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians with American warfare against Germany in Japan in World War II (an intriguing comparison in and of itself, but that is another matter) and drawing the conclusion that Gaza should be flattened, including with nuclear weapons.
Gaza has been flattened, and to his dying day, Graham never showed an ounce of compassion for those slaughtered by his Israeli friends and did everything he could to support that slaughter. That is, of course, also why internationally wanted war criminal – really genocidaire – Benjamin Netanyahu rushed to offer his public condolences.
Speaking of Graham’s obvious subservience to Israel, the senator was, unsurprisingly, also a great fan of going to war with Iran, tirelessly calling for attacking it as violently as possible. He spread the Orwellian lies that Iran was about to pose a nuclear threat to the US and that its ballistic missile arsenal was a tool of reckless aggression, all to produce domestic support for yet another criminal American war. Himself addicted to hiding his foul character behind a bigoted and utterly fake Christian piety, Graham compared Iran’s leaders to Hitler and called them “religious Nazis,” thereby not merely offending brave men towering above him in moral and intellectual terms, but also helping to drum up propaganda for murdering them.
It is an irony of history or, maybe, divine justice that he lived just long enough to see the US follow his insane and corrupt advice and suffer a geopolitically catastrophic defeat for it. Yet Graham was a monster long before the Gaza Genocide and the US-Israeli war against Iran. He was obsessed with brutalizing as many other countries and societies as possible. He could not see an opportunity for a war and not do his worst to make it happen. Graham’s record of warmongering is so extensive that it is hard to reproduce it in its entirety. Just shortly before his end, he had been calling for more US violence in Cuba, Lebanon, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Yemen – apart, obviously, from his eternal compulsion to scream for, in effect, more dead Palestinians and Iranians.
In true American fashion, if being Graham’s target was terrible, being his ‘friend’ was no better. Ukraine has come to stand for that experience. Even while pretending to be its ardent supporter, Graham was always among those most brutally open about using Ukraine and its people for the geopolitical and commercial interests of the US. He praised opportunities to rob Ukraine of crucial raw materials and he clearly considered pumping money into its ultra-corrupt Zelensky regime a great deal as it produced dead Russians (and, he failed to mention, Ukrainians, too, of course).

Apparently, there’s some case playing out right now. Why only RT reports on it, I do not know.

”The son of the previous US president was awarded $1.7 million in damages in his dispute with Trump ally Patrick Byrne..”

“..Biden brought Byrne to court over repeated claims that he sought an $800 million bribe from Iran during his father’s presidency “..

• Hunter Biden Wins Defamation Suit Over ‘Iran Bribery’ Claims (RT)

A US federal judge on Friday awarded Hunter Biden $1.7 million in damages in a defamation suit against Patrick Byrne, former Overstock.com CEO and outspoken backer of US President Donald Trump. The lawsuit had been dragging on since 2023, when Biden brought Byrne to court over repeated claims that he sought an $800 million bribe from Iran during his father’s presidency. Byrne alleged that in exchange for the massive payout, Biden promised to get some $8 billion in Iranian funds unfrozen and to ensure a softer stance in nuclear talks with Tehran.

While Byrne has insisted he believed the allegations to be genuine, he failed to “provide to this court, throughout the course of litigation, any documentary evidence that could allow a reasonable person to believe the story to be true,” the judge said in his ruling. Moreover, the court found “ample evidence” indicating the defendant knew the claims were false but spread them nonetheless. The claims disseminated by the defendant “went far beyond mere negligence,” and the former CEO acted with “intentional misrepresentation” and “conscious disregard,” continuing to spread the claims even after he was sued by Hunter and encouraging social media users to propagate them further.
“The evidence is clear and convincing that [Byrne] has engaged in intentional misrepresentation with conscious disregard towards [Biden’s] rights,” the judge wrote in the ruling, which awarded Hunter $1.7 million in punitive damages. The legal team of the ex-president’s son hailed the ruling as a “complete vindication” for their client against the “false statements” made by Byrne. “As found by the court, Byrne had no basis to say that Hunter had any involvement with Iran whatsoever,” Hunter’s attorney Bryan Sullivan said in a statement.
Over the past years, Biden has been embroiled in assorted legal troubles and claims to have racked up a massive debt primarily stemming from court fees, even despite his father granting him a pardon for convictions on federal gun and tax charges in the last days of his presidency. Byrne is no stranger to controversy either, being one of the central figures of the scandal involving Russian gun activist Maria Butina, with whom he admitted to having an intimate relationship. Butina was ultimately convicted of “conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent” and expelled to Russia after serving a prison term.
The affair prompted Byrne to step down from his executive role in 2019, with the businessman focusing primarily on political activism ever since. He has strongly supported US President Trump, including by backing the allegations that the latter was cheated out of the 2020 election win, as well as bankrolling legal efforts to challenge the outcome.

Before I saw the RT coverage, I wrote:

Jonathan Turley omits to explain why he is dealing with this right now. Isn’t this 2-3 years old? Is there a new case we should all know about?

• The Absurdity of the Hunter Biden Defamation Case (Turley)

I have taught torts, including defamation for over 30 years, but I have never seen the like of the Hunter Biden defamation case. The defendant made defamatory statements and then just refused to appear. That led to an equally bizarre $1.7 million award by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California to Biden, consisting of just $1 in nominal damages and the rest in punitive damages. Here is the most interesting line of the opinion: “the damage to Plaintiff’s reputation is difficult to calculate.” It may be the single greatest understatement in the history of judicial opinions.

However, the court also noted “Plaintiff does not seek actual damages above a nominal amount.” That means that Hunter Biden’s counsel, in a default case, elected not to argue for compensatory damages due to loss of reputation. Why would he do that? It might be that he has little reputation to lose and that opening up that part of the case was fraught with perils. However, it also created a potential major appellate issue. His counsel was making it clear that they were litigating purely for punitives.
For Hunter Biden, this is a much-needed windfall. His art sales notably collapsed with the value of currying favor to the Bidens. He is reportedly being pursued by creditors, including former counsel. The question is whether the award will stand. For many critics, Hunter Biden is virtually ‘libel proof” as an individual who has no reputation to lose. However, as we have previously discussed, that status is reserved for the most reviled personalities who cannot be defamed due to the lack of any positive reputation.
Judge Wilson, a Reagan appointee, admits in his opinion that determining reputational harm to someone like Biden is difficult to do and further recognizes the argument that “prior tarnishing of Plaintiff’s reputation may reduce the reprehensibility of Defendant’s conduct.” The case involves a claim by former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne that Biden took part in an $800 million bribery scheme involving Iran and failed to defend his claims in court. Hunter Biden has long been accused of influence peddling that generated millions for him and his family. I have been one of his longest critics as part of a corrupt family enterprise.
However, this claim was not one of those that his critics, and Congress, focused on during the Biden years. There is no evidence that he took a bribe or payment in a quid pro quo for releasing the money to Iran. The lawsuit was part of a flurry of such actions brought against Biden’s critics. Most were later dismissed, but played a part in the scorched-earth campaign of Biden. I was even threatened with such an action after criticizing his counsel and financial backer, Kevin Morris. As Biden dropped the other lawsuits, this one continued to be litigated. It was an easy kill. Byrne simply did not defend himself and defaulted. That left the matter to Judge Wilson, who was clearly irate.
The opinion recounts an extraordinary pile-up as Byrne sought to replace lawyers: “Defendant initially attempted to replace Mr. Murphy with three new lawyers: Eric Neff, Tom Yu, and Stefanie Lynn Lambert Junttila. ECF Nos. 290, 291, 292. Ms. Lambert was not a member of the California Bar, and her application to appear pro hac vice was denied2 due to her recent history of unethical conduct, which gave the Court reason to doubt she would abide by the Court’s rules and practices. ECF No. 295. When Defendant learned that Ms. Lambert was not qualified to represent him in this case, Defendant also instructed Mr. Neff and Mr. Yu to remove themselves.
Moreover, Defendant himself, now unrepresented, still failed to appear at trial. Accordingly, the Court issued an order to show cause why it should not enter default judgment against Defendant and ordered the parties to return the following day. At that hearing, on July 30, 2025, Defendant again failed to appear. Mr. Yu, who was not authorized to represent Defendant at trial, argued on Defendant’s behalf for a continuance, in lieu of default judgment.”

https://twitter.com/Dogetothemoon/status/2076398023652065674?s=20 https://twitter.com/DrcharlieWardQ/status/2075984789392261450?s=20

Antarctica is colder and more icebound today than at any point in the past 5,000 years.

Research by Hall (2023) found that West Antarctica cooled by more than 1.8C between 1999 and 2018.

Satellite data confirm continent-wide cooling, as do multiple glacier studies.

Piccini… pic.twitter.com/KI3C7CTlxD
— Electroverse (@Electroversenet) July 12, 2026

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Debt Rattle July 13 2026

Jul 132026

July 13, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:43 am Finance Tagged with: banana republic, children, Hormuz, Lindsey Graham, Mojtaba Khamenei, Ukrainian nazi collaborators, Zelensky 32 Responses »

Claude Monet Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son 1874

• Sen. Lindsey Graham Dead at 71 (Sarah Anderson)

• “What Makes It Even Stranger…” (ZH)

• The Passing of Lindsey Graham, American Patriot and Politician (Turley)

• Losing Lindsey Graham Is a Massive Blow for President Trump (Matt Vespa)

• Strait of Hormuz Open To All Vessels — CENTCOM (TASS)

• Somebody in Tehran Who Calls Himself ‘Mojtaba Khamenei’ Vows Revenge (Spencer)

• Zelensky Voices Plans To Replace Government, Dismiss Prime Minister (TASS)

• EU Turning Into ‘Banana Republic’ – Durov (RT)

• ‘Sober up’ – Polish PM tells Ukraine (RT)

• Poland Marks Anniversary of WWII Massacre By Ukrainian Nazi Collaborators (RT)

• ‘Burning Children Alive’: WWII-Era Ukrainian Massacres of Poles (RT)

• Investing in Kids and Country (Clarice Feldman)

• Why Our Kids Don’t Learn (Star Parker)

Did Russia just poison Lindsey Graham?

There seriously needs to be an investigation. Russia just sent a delegation to Khamenei’s funeral in Tehran where the IRGC and funeral organizers was calling for myself, President Trump and Senator Graham to be assassinated.

Lindsey… https://t.co/bEBz7LpuLi
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 12, 2026

https://twitter.com/Rothmus/status/2075935311905927542?s=20 https://twitter.com/tvc1five/status/2075967524181565483?s=20

Pavel Durov owns 100% of Telegram, a company used by over a billion people and has hundreds of millions in the bank.

He doesn't own a house. No jet. No yacht. No real estate. Nothing.

Tucker Carlson was visibly stunned: "I've never heard of that before."

So why?

Durov's… pic.twitter.com/IypOyNd6xR
— Business Nerd (@Business_Nerd_) July 11, 2026

LA SITUATION DÉGÉNÈRE ! Elon Musk et Marine Le Pen renversent totalement la situation C'est le retournement le plus spectaculaire de ces dernières années. Alors que tout semblait perdu pour les forces nationales, Elon Musk et Marine Le Pen viennent de s'allier de manière… pic.twitter.com/fyHbAStnnX
— Isa (@patte_louis) July 11, 2026

Lindsey Graham was more than an ultra violent gaydar offsetter. But I don’t quite know what to make of all the theories that the timeline of his death doesn’t add up. That he couldn’t possibly have been back in the US in time, after his visit to Ukraine, to have died in his own bed. Let alone to speak with President Trump after he returned. I guess some serious people will look at that timeline for us.

• Sen. Lindsey Graham Dead at 71 (Sarah Anderson)

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) officed announced early Sunday morning that the senator died after a “brief and sudden” illness. He was 71 years old. “On the evening of Saturday, July 11, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham passed away from a brief and sudden illness,” the statement said. “Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period.”

Statement from the Office of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). pic.twitter.com/CQ5yVvqTH1
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 12, 2026

Despite the late hour of the announcement, several prominent political figures have spoken out, offering their condolences and support to his family and sharing their fond memories of Graham, who served in the Senate for 23 years. That includes South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster.
“Peggy and I and our children-are devastated,” McMaster said. “Lindsey Graham is irreplaceable. The fiercest of fighters for South Carolina and America — and a loyal and steadfast friend. We grieve with Darline, his family and his devoted staff. May God hold him gently in the palm of his hand. We shall not see his likes again.” Darline is, of course, Graham’s younger sister, whom he raised after both of their parents died within 15 months of each other. He was 22, and she was just 13 years old at the time.

My statement on the passing of Senator Lindsey Graham: pic.twitter.com/hbrjnMXIQd
— Gov. Henry McMaster (@henrymcmaster) July 12, 2026

Donald Trump also responded on Truth Social around 3:20 a.m. on Sunday morning: “Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead! He was always working, and was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed!!! DETAILS AND ARRANGEMENTS TO FOLLOW. So sad!President DONALD J. TRUMP
Graham had just returned home from Kyiv, Ukraine, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He was scheduled to appear on Meet the Press on Sunday.

Good meeting with U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC in Kyiv. This is already his 10th visit to our country, and we appreciate this support.

I'm grateful to Lindsey for recognizing our warriors. The stronger Ukraine is on the battlefield, the greater the chances that… pic.twitter.com/bgZjjgIqu1
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 10, 2026

According to NBC, which obtained audio from a police scanner, “emergency personnel responded to a call for ‘cardiac arrest’ at Graham’s Capitol Hill home on Saturday.” NBC also claims that its staff saw photos of paramedics carrying a person out on a stretcher to an ambulance outside Graham’s home. Several police and fire vehicles were on the scene.
Graham, who was up for re-election, served as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He was one of President Donald Trump’s best allies in the Senate, as well as one of its most visible and outspoken members, particularly when it came to his hawkishness on foreign policy. Several members of Congress and other world leaders have also posted messages to social media over the last few minutes, and I’m sure many more will pour in later in the day and into the week. I’ll just share a few here:
Deeply saddened by the passing of Senator Lindsey Graham. He leaves behind a legacy of dedicated public service, a commitment to national security, and an unwavering fight for freedom. Lourdes & I are praying for his family and loved ones. May he rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/q0bmuD6CX2
— Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (@RepCarlos) July 12, 2026

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
Sara and I grieve with the American people over the loss of our dear friend, Senator Lindsey Graham.

In our recent meeting, I said, "Lindsey is a great friend of Israel and a cherished friend of mine. We have no better friend than Lindsey."… pic.twitter.com/OSToT8FCYm
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) July 12, 2026

“Trump Describes Saturday Night Phone Call With Lindsey Graham Hours Before Senator’s Death..”

• “What Makes It Even Stranger…” (ZH)

Update (1135ET): President Trump has weighed in on Graham’s death, telling Meet the Press that Graham called him in the ‘early evening,’ to tell Trump he was ‘all set for the Save America Act,’ and that it may have been the last call Graham made.

“what makes it even stranger is that I got a call last night sometimes in, you know, the early evening, maybe in the 7:00’s. And he called and he said, “We’re all set for the Save America Act,”” Trump told host Kristen Walker. “He was pushing the Save America Act like crazy. He got back, said he just landed from Ukraine. I said, “That’s a long trip to make.””

TRUMP: “What makes it even stranger is that I got a call last night sometime … and [Lindsey Graham] said we're all set for the Save America Act … We thought maybe we might even meet today. And then that was it.” pic.twitter.com/9YVdW3VzRM
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) July 12, 2026

Graham notably toured a top secret Ukrainian ‘Skyfall’ drone factory (see more below) days before his death, where the country’s deadly ‘Baba Yaga’ Vampire bomber drones are manufactured. He also announced an upcoming Russian sanctions package, and said that the US can learn a lot from Ukraine’s UAV advancements. “I believe that it would be a huge mistake for America not to cooperate with Ukraine in the field of drones. They are ready to help us, because we were ready to support Ukraine in the most difficult times,” Graham said.

This was Lindsey Graham two days ago in Kyiv after meeting with Zelensky. pic.twitter.com/J8VW3hmXfl
— MAZE (@mazemoore) July 12, 2026

US Senator Lindsey Graham visited Ukraine's SkyFall and got a look at Vampire heavy bomber drones, Shrike FPVs and P1-SUN Shahed interceptors, plus some new tech not yet on the battlefield. Looks pretty happy holding Ukraine's P1-SUN drone in the photo. pic.twitter.com/o2gFBt657c
— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) July 11, 2026

When asked about a replacement for Graham, Trump said “I have somebody that I think would be great. But I don’t want to say it now because, you know, it’s too soon with Lindsey. I don’t want to even talk about anybody. But I do have somebody that I think is really good.”
International Response
In reaction to Graham’s death, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy paid tribute, describing Graham as “a true defender of freedom and of the values that make our world safer.” He highlighted that Graham had visited Ukraine ten times during the war, noting they were in constant dialogue. Zelenskyy added that Graham had been working on key initiatives in recent weeks to advance peace, including stronger sanctions against Russia. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called Graham a “true friend” and “one of the strongest voices” supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. He praised Graham for pushing to bolster sanctions on Russia and for helping provide Ukraine with the means to defend itself.

Surprising eulogy.

• The Passing of Lindsey Graham, American Patriot and Politician (Turley)

I am in Chautauqua, New York for a book event this week and was shocked to wake up to find that Lindsey Graham has died at 71. I knew and worked with Lindsey since his time in the House of Representatives. We would correspond regularly on legal and constitutional issues. He was an extraordinary man with a deep and unshakable faith in this nation. His death is a great loss for our nation. Lindsey was a true son of South Carolina. Born in the town of Central, South Carolina, he attended the University of South Carolina for both his undergraduate and law school degrees. He became a prosecutor with the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Office. He held the rank of Colonel in the Air Force Reserves.

His career is legendary and played a major role in military and foreign affairs. However, his greatest influence on the Senate was his practical thinking mixed with a disarming sense of humor. I would often receive texts or emails from Lindsey on ideas for resolving national problems. They were always bold and creative. He loved the law and enjoyed talking through such issues, often setting them aside after reflection on the political or legal complications.
We worked together on matters before the Judiciary Committee and I testified before him on issues ranging from investigations to impeachments. I would hear from him after I posted columns with praise or criticism of the underlying points. He was not only a skilled litigator but also had a keen sense of the practical. He was the ultimate problem solver, always looking for a way to navigate around barriers on the Hill. What I will miss most was his humor. Lindsey had a puckish side and looked at much of the insanity on the Hill with a sense of exasperated levity. He was often frustrated by the lack of progress in the Senate and would joke about it being the “most deliberative body” with a certain irony.
BREAKING: An initial examination from the DC Medical Examiner’s Office has determined that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) died as a result of “Aortic Dissection due to Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease”. In layman’s terms, this means a tear in the aorta caused by hardening &…
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 12, 2026

His jokes would often be self-deprecating, downplaying his considerable skills and gifts. However, Lindsey’s aw-shucks style concealed one of the most penetrating minds in the Senate. He also had an iron core, unflinching in the face of withering criticism and attacks. A mob could surround Lindsey and not raise his pulse rate a tick. He was rock solid. It was Lindsey’s voice that would often cut through the noise and nonsense of the Hill, with his signature Southern drawl. He was particularly effective in controversies such as the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
.He was a major supporter of Israel and Ukraine. He recently returned from Kyiv, where he met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to address Ukraine’s air defense systems. The left has already filled the web with vicious attacks on Lindsey. In an age of rage, even a period of mourning or civility is considered intolerable. People either loved or hated Lindsey, but few had the chance to know him. He was a warm and fascinating man. He stepped forward to enter the fray in defense of the values that he held most dear.
Thank you, Lindsey, and rest in peace.

“If he wanted to get something, if he thought he was right, and he had people against him, he could be very tough, actually,” Trump said. “But he was a good person.”

• Losing Lindsey Graham Is a Massive Blow for President Trump (Matt Vespa)

There were times when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) caused concern for me and the GOP base as a whole. We called him out for it, but he never crossed into Mitt Romney territory. Still, he did more to help the conservative cause, and his institutional knowledge, experience, and talent for retail politics proved invaluable.

Graham, who had just returned from a trip to a Ukrainian drone production facility, died suddenly at his DC residence on Saturday night, with preliminary reports indicating an aortic dissection. The South Carolina Republican had reportedly said he wasn’t feeling well, and an aide even suggested he seek medical attention. He wanted to wait until after his ‘Meet the Press’ appearance on Sunday. Graham was working on a US-Saudi Arabia defense treaty, normalizing Israel-Saudi relations, a Russian sanctions bill, and the passage of the SAVE America Act.
President Trump sounded devastated when he spoke of the late Graham, adding that his ability to cut deals with Democrats and navigate key pieces of legislation was top-notch (via NBC News): The late senator was a close ally of Trump’s, and the president described him to “Meet the Press” as someone who was “like a member of the family to me.” The two spoke regularly on the phone and golfed together. Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine before his sudden death. The president said that Graham called him in the early evening to discuss the SAVE America Act, a bill that would reshape how elections operate but does not have enough support to pass the Senate.
“He actually said he was tired, but he wanted to pass the SAVE America Act, and I said, ‘Well, we’re going to get it done, Lindsey. We’re going to get it done. I’ll see you, like, soon,’” Trump told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, adding that the two believed they might meet on Sunday. In a separate interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Trump said that Graham was also “telling me about the trip” in their phone call, noting that the senator “had a great trip.” Trump remembered the late senator as someone with a “unique ability,” saying that Graham could work out issues with Democrats and that he “loved being a politician.”
“If I had a problem, a real problem, I wouldn’t often ask. But if I had a problem with a Democrat, he could work it out,” Trump said. “He was a great, he was a great politician, actually.” At the same time, Trump said, the senator could be a “tough cookie.” “If he wanted to get something, if he thought he was right, and he had people against him, he could be very tough, actually,” Trump said. “But he was a good person.”
So, who will fill that void—the essential GOP senator who can keep the ship steady as it navigates the procedural hurricanes that have derailed many bills? As of now, no one. Trump said he had a name in mind but refused to reveal whom he was talking about. Politically, losing Graham was undoubtedly a blow to the Trump White House and the GOP—he was able to bridge the two sides. Graham was especially key in helping pass the big, important bill (via Politico):
Trump said Graham called him just hours before he died to discuss the SAVE America Act, the GOP elections bill that has stalled for months in the Senate. Graham supported the legislation but frequently explained how most Senate Republicans did not want to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster rule to pass it. It was one of several points of friction between the White House and the more tradition-bound Senate that needed to be smoothed over by Graham and others during Trump’s first and second terms.
He eased tensions during hot conversations between Senate Republicans and the president, and helped shepherd last year’s “big, beautiful bill” and this year’s immigration enforcement bill. But Graham’s power had its limits: He was among the most ardent supporters for strong U.S. support for Ukraine, a position Trump didn’t embrace as fervently. “His role in the Senate and his role as a liaison between the administration and the Senate and trusted confidant and adviser was colossal,” said a White House official who like others in this report was granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. “It’s a devastating development. Everyone who touches the legislature and the administration is crushed.”
Graham’s ability to communicate with and persuade the executive branch was “multidimensional — from rounds of golf, to appearances on television, to dinner with administration officials,” a person close to the administration said. “I think the senator saw his relationship as a loyal and longtime friend trying to help navigate the president’s priorities through the Senate.” In turn, “Senate leadership saw Lindsey as a key link — whether as a colleague, chairman, counselor, or conduit,” the person said.

“The US forces being prepared to ensure free navigation along this waterway, the US Central Command said ..”

• Strait of Hormuz Open To All Vessels — CENTCOM (TASS)

The Strait of Hormuz is open to all vessels, with the US forces being prepared to ensure free navigation along this waterway, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said. “The Strait of Hormuz is open to all vessels seeking to lawfully transit the international waterway. U.S. forces are positioned and prepared to ensure that freedom of navigation remains available despite unwarranted Iranian aggression, harassment, threats, and arbitrary declarations,” it wrote on X.

“Iran does not control the strait. Traffic is flowing,” it underscored, adding that more than 140 vessels has passed through the strait in the past seven days. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, elite units of the Iranian army) fired warning shots at a vessel trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz along an unauthorized route. The strait has been closed until further notice, it added.

“.. the X account that bills itself as “the official account for the news and statements of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Sayyid Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei..”

• Somebody in Tehran Who Calls Himself ‘Mojtaba Khamenei’ Vows Revenge (Spencer)

We still haven’t seen hide nor hair of Mojtaba Khamenei, the putative supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, since he got the top spot in March. The word going around is that he was severely maimed in the strike that killed his predecessor and father, and others speculate that he may actually be dead, while Iranian officials pretend he is alive in order to give their almost universally hated regime some legitimacy.

Whatever may be going on with Mojtaba, however, on Saturday, the X account that bills itself as “the official account for the news and statements of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Sayyid Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei” came alive with an energy that was positively Trumpian, putting up fourteen posts in quick succession, detailing how the rulers of Iran plan to gain sweet revenge against those whom they hate. (It could have been one long message, but Mojtaba, or whoever is writing in his name on X, apparently hasn’t shelled out the eight bucks a month for a blue checkmark.)
Whoever it actually came from, the message came with a bit of fanfare; at 5:41 a.m. Eastern time, the alleged Mojtaba announced that “in an hour” there would come “Imam Sayyid Mojtaba Khamenei’s important message following the funeral and burial of the Leader of Truth-Seekers of the World, Martyr Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei.” And sure enough, 54 minutes later, the posts started coming. Mojtaba, or whoever, started out by praising the Imam Hussein, whom Islamic tradition identifies as the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the founding figure of Shi’ite Islam, and the grandson of the prophet of Islam himself, Muhammad. At the Battle of Karbala in Iraq in the year 680, the Sunni caliph Yazid killed Hussein, and that killing is generally considered to mark the beginning of the formal split between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims.
Every year on the tenth day of the month of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, Shi’ites engage in elaborate public mourning for Hussein, often whipping themselves or cutting their heads with knives to express their grief and punish themselves that they weren’t on hand fourteen centuries ago to save their leader. That’s why Mojtaba is talking about Hussein: he attempts to portray his late father, who before he was killed stained his hands with the blood of 40,000 of his countrymen for the crime of protesting against his criminal and inhumane regime, as a martyred leader in the mold of one of the pivotal founding figures of Shi’ism. What better way to cement loyalty to the regime than by associating loyalty to it with loyalty to Allah himself?
To drive the point home, Mojtaba tells us that “Martyr Khamenei acted like Hussain, and engaged in jihad and resistance in a manner similar to Imam Hussain (pbuh).” “PBUH” is “peace be upon him,” which Muslims generally say after uttering the name of a prophet; it is a sign of how highly Mojtaba, and Shi’ites in general, regard Hussain that he used it after his name as well. Mojtaba added: “Among the followers of Hussain are those whose blood, when unjustly spilled in his path and for his school of thought and ideals, moves the Muslim Ummah [global community] to action, so that their time becomes joined to Ashura and their place to Karbala.”
Khamenei is saying that it’s time once again to go to war for the Islamic faith. “For years,” he says, “the Iranian nation has sacrificed its children on the path of Hussain, battling the enemies of Hussain and the enemies of Hussain’s way, and today it seeks to take revenge for his blood and the blood of the people like Hussain in our time.” That would, of course, be dear old dad, whom Mojtaba then addresses: “We pledge to avenge your pure blood and the blood of all the martyrs of these two [recent] wars by taking revenge against the criminal, disgraceful murderers. This vengeance is what our nation is demanding, and this must definitely be done.” And: “The criminal, disgraceful murderers of the martyred Leader, whose names are fully documented from the highest to the lowest ranks, will carry their dream of a peaceful death in bed to the grave.”
Whoever wrote all this is making it abundantly clear that the Islamic Republic of Iran has not changed. It has not deviated even an inch from its goals of “death to America” and “death to Israel,” which Mojtaba’s father said were policies, not mere slogans. It will keep waging jihad against both countries. It will keep trying to murder Trump. It will keep sponsoring jihad terror activity around the world. One hopes that this message is being carefully studied in Washington, and any idea that the regime has somehow changed being definitively put to rest.

It’s not him. It’s his puppeteers. London. Maybe Paris and Berlin.

• Zelensky Voices Plans To Replace Government, Dismiss Prime Minister (TASS)

Vladimir Zelensky announced the need to replace the country’s current government and his intention to dismiss Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko. Specifically, he offered her a new position. “We discussed the details with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko. We determined that changes require a renewal of the cabinet. I thanked Yulia for her clear, stable, and effective work as prime minister, for her years of productive work on the Ukrainian team, and offered her to lead a new significant direction,” Zelensky wrote on his Telegram channel.

Yulia Sviridenko became Prime Minister of Ukraine on July 17, 2025, replacing Denis Shmygal, who currently serves as First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy. Following Sviridenko’s resignation, he will automatically become acting prime minister until the Verkhovna Rada approves a new government lineup.

“:The Telegram co-founder has blasted the use of a loophole by the European Parliament to pass a law allowing tech firms to scan users’ messages..”

Freedom disappears from Europe. What can we do?

• EU Turning Into ‘Banana Republic’ – Durov (RT)

The European Union has stooped to using dubious procedural loopholes usually employed by backwater regimes to pass controversial legislation, Pavel Durov has argued. The Telegram co-founder was referring to the contentious regulation that allows tech companies to scan their users’ messages, ostensibly to detect child sexual abuse material. In a post on X on Friday, the entrepreneur wrote: “Once typical of banana republics, such tricks are now used by the EU to pass surveillance laws.”

Durov’s comment came shortly after the European Parliament voted on Thursday to revive what critics have dubbed the ‘Chat Control’ legislation. The temporary regime had originally lapsed in April after MEPs had failed to find common ground amid an outcry over privacy concerns. However, Parliament President Roberta Metsola asked EU leaders to restart talks on the regulation, with the European Council granting her request, meaning that the proposal was again put to a plenary vote at the bloc’s legislature.
Law enforcement officials, including Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle, have likewise supported the controversial framework, describing it as a vital tool “for the protection of children.”mAccording to the Euractiv media outlet, four EU commissioners also put pressure on lawmakers to pass the legislation. The center-right European People’s Party (EPP), of which Metsola is a member, arranged for the vote to be subject to a rarely-invoked legislative procedure, which requires an absolute majority of at least 361 MEPs to axe or amend a proposal.
The vote was held the day before summer recess, when full attendance was highly unlikely. As a result, the scheme was passed despite opposition from most present lawmakers. Commenting on the development, Rand Hammoud from Europe’s Center for Democracy and Technology denounced what he characterized as “highly politicized procedural efforts” to ram the proposal through. “When the largest group uses its political weight to force another vote on a mass-scanning measure that already failed, that should concern anyone who cares about institutional integrity,” he told Euractiv.
“It is impressive to see the European Parliament being backstabbed by its own president,” Simeon de Brouwer from civil society network Edri concurred, as quoted by the media outlet. He warned that the ‘Chat Control’ law allows tech companies to “snoop without a warrant, with little to no oversight, and with no legal basis, on millions of conversations.”mMeanwhile, a broader ‘Chat Control 2.0.’ framework is reportedly being prepared that would force tech companies to snoop on end-to-end encrypted communications, which are currently exempt from scans.

“Kiev must recognize the massacre of Poles by Nazi collaborators during WWII in order to mend ties with Warsaw, Donald Tusk has said..”

Kiev celebratess the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators.

• ‘Sober up’ – Polish PM tells Ukraine (RT)

Kiev needs to “sober up” to prevent further escalation in the row with Warsaw over the glorification of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said. Tensions between the neighboring countries, which have been close allies during the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, escalated last month after Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky named one of his country’s commando units after “heroes of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army).”

Speaking on Friday, the eve of the National Day of Remembrance, when Poland honors the victims of UPA, Tusk insisted that Kiev must recognize the crimes committed by the UPA if it hopes to mend ties with Warsaw. “I can once again appeal to all decent, wise, responsible Ukrainians. Remember, this great European community is based on the truth and the truth is an absolutely necessary foundation of reconciliation, and that’s why I hope that everyone on the other side, but also everyone here in Poland, will sober up to restrain these exaggerated emotions,” he said.
The row “has gone too far and is harming both Poland and Ukraine. I have no doubt about it,” the prime minister added. It has ignited “nationalist lunatics” on both sides, causing an avalanche of hatred on social media, Tusk noted. He urged the authorities in Kiev to curb any anti-Polish sentiment and vowed that Warsaw will act with “the full force of law” against anyone who commits crimes against Ukrainians on ethnic grounds. “The Russians would be happiest if there was some dramatic crisis in Ukrainian-Polish relations,” the prime minister warned.
Poland blames the UPA – an armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which fought for Nazi Germany during World War II – for an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Volhynia region between 1943 and 1944 that left at least 100,000 civilians dead. Warsaw recognizes the massacres as a genocide. Following Zelensky’s move last month, Polish President Karol Nawrocki reacted by stripping him of the country’s highest honor, the Order of the White Eagle, prompting several Ukrainian officials to return their own Polish decorations to Warsaw. Poland also rolled back its decision to transfer its remaining Soviet-era MiG-29 jets to Ukraine and questioned Kiev’s prospects of joining the EU.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that the West, including Poland, raised a “terrorist monster” in Ukraine by arming and funding it, while ignoring its Nazi ideological foundations. Warsaw “knew they were supporting those who had killed their grandfathers” and this fact “can no longer be undone by simply taking away the White Eagle, posting a few tweets, or making loud statements,” she argued.

President Karol Nawrocki has vowed to outlaw the red-and-black flag used by nationalists in Ukraine

• Poland Marks Anniversary of WWII Massacre By Ukrainian Nazi Collaborators (RT)

Poland has commemorated the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre, a large-scale ethnic cleansing operation perpetrated by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during World War II and a hot-button topic that sparked a recent diplomatic clash between Warsaw and Kiev.

Multiple events were held across Poland on Saturday to honor the victims of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The commemoration is tied to events of July 11, 1943, also known as Bloody Sunday, which marked the height of the massacre when nearly 100 Polish-populated towns across Volhynia were attacked. According to Polish estimates, at least 100,000 ethnic Poles were killed between 1943 and 1944 in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia regions, which are now largely part of modern Ukraine.
The commemorations were attended by top Polish officials, with President Karol Nawrocki making an appearance at a ceremony in the village of Radruz, one of the targets of the OUN-UPA militants. “We are here so that the reality of today’s and tomorrow’s world can be heard. Because we will not accept forgetting the 120,000 Poles, civilians, women, and children brutally murdered by Ukrainian nationalists,” Nawrocki stated.
The president pledged to take further action against the Ukrainian nationalist ideology, arguing in favor of outlawing the red-and-black flag of the OUN-UPA. The banner has been widely used by present-day Ukrainian nationalists, as well as incorporated into emblems of multiple units within the country’s military. “We do not want to see it in Poland – and I will do everything to ensure that it is not present in Poland. I believe that the Polish parliament will pass the relevant law,” he said, comparing the flag to Nazi Germany memorabilia.
“It is the same as the ‘Blut und Boden’ (‘Blood and Soil’) flag. That is what it meant, and behind it lay – and still lies – the entire ideology of Ukrainian nationalists who killed Polish women and children,” he stressed. Footage from the village of Domostawa, the home to a contemporary monument honoring the Volhynia massacre victims, shows dozens of people attending the solemn gathering. Unveiled in 2024, the monument has drawn some controversy over its brutal depiction of a child impaled on a pitchfork, somewhat resembling the Ukrainian heraldic trident.
The Volhynia massacre has remained an unresolved issue between Kiev and Warsaw. While Poland recognizes the massacre as genocide, Ukraine celebrates its perpetrators as ‘freedom fighters’ and national heroes. The tensions reignited last month when Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky named one of Ukraine’s commando units after “heroes of the UPA,” prompting Nawrocki to strip him of Poland’s highest honor. Several Ukrainian officials responded to the move by returning decorations received from Warsaw. Meanwhile, Poland’s main opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party said it would submit a parliamentary resolution opposing Ukraine’s EU accession as long as Kiev continues to “glorify criminals.”
The Volhynia issue has already done a lot of damage to ties between Poland and Ukraine and is bound to spark a conflict within Poland itself in the future, leader of the Front party and former Polish MP, Krzysztof Tolwinski, told RT. “The only thing is the outcome of this little war is a foregone conclusion – Russia will bring Ukraine back to normal and restore order there. Those who fought will never make peace with Russians; this is why they will end up on Polish territory. And this is when an internal conflict will begin, a real inevitable one,” Tolwinski stated.

“The UPA insurgents behind the ethnic cleansing campaign in Volhynia are hailed as heroes in modern-day Ukraine..”

• ‘Burning Children Alive’: WWII-Era Ukrainian Massacres of Poles (RT)

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has released newly declassified documents detailing the massacre of Poles by Ukrainian nationalist militias during World War II in what is now western Ukraine. The release comes as Poland marks its National Day of Remembrance on Saturday honoring the victims of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The ethnic cleansing campaign in the Volhynia region between 1943 and 1944 claimed the lives of at least 100,000 civilians, according to Polish estimates.

A monument in Domostawa, Poland, commemorating Polish civilians killed by Ukrainian nationalist militias during World War II.

Poland recognizes these tragic events as a genocide. Ukraine, however, celebrates the UPA as freedom fighters, a stance that has led to a high-profile diplomatic dispute between the neighboring countries. The Soviet archival files released by Russia describe the activities of the OUN unit led by Dmytro Kupyak, known by the nom de guerre Kley, who is believed to have been responsible for killing at least 200 Polish and Soviet nationals, as well as burning and looting eight villages.
On May 16, 1944, during a raid on the village of Kupche, Kley’s unit killed residents “solely because they were ethnic Poles,” the files say. On August 17 that year, the nationalists raided the village of Grabovo, where they locked nine women and children in a shed before burning them alive. One of Kupyak’s former associates, Andrey Moroz, described him in a Soviet court as a “simple bandit” without any ideological convictions. After the war, Kupyak fled to Canada, where he ran a restaurant in Toronto until his death in 1995. In the 1960s, the Canadian government denied Soviet requests to extradite him.
The OUN collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of the invasion of the Soviet Union and participated in anti-Jewish pogroms. The UPA was created in 1942 after the OUN split with the Germans. Many UPA members were defectors from Nazi-led units, including its eventual leader, Roman Shukhevich, who had previously served as deputy commander of the Nachtigall Battalion. Last month, Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of Poland’s highest honor, the Order of the White Eagle, after Zelensky named one of Ukraine’s commando units after “heroes of the UPA.” Several Ukrainian officials responded by returning their own Polish decorations to Warsaw.

“Yet another Trump innovation that will be paying off long after he leaves office. ”

• Investing in Kids and Country (Clarice Feldman)

The Fourth of July was not only a day to celebrate our country’s independence. It marks the date of a new kind of investment account for children of citizens who are under 18 and who have Social Security account numbers. The Trump Accounts (530A accounts) are a brilliant idea. Often compared to “starter IRA accounts,” the children are the owners of the accounts, which are to be managed by a responsible adult — guardian or parent. Funds in these accounts must be conservatively invested in U.S. stock index funds. Fund fees must be low — no more than 0.1%.

Contributions are not deductible, but growth of the accounts is tax-deferred. Except for rare cases, like the death of the beneficiary, the funds cannot be withdrawn until the child reaches 18, at which point they are taxed as ordinary income at the child’s rate — which normally will be small if the funds are withdrawn while young. Once the child reaches 18, the Trump account automatically converts to a standard traditional IRA or Roth IRA. Employers, charities, or family members can contribute with annual contributions for each account limited to $5,000. Even sweeter, employers can contribute up to $2,500 tax-free to accounts. Sweeter yet, for those children born between 2025 and 2028, there will be a federal contribution of $1,000 to start the account off.

To open one of these accounts, use IRS Form 4547 or use the online portal trumpaccounts.gov. A number of private individuals and foundations, notably Michael and Susan Dell, have kicked in a lot to these accounts — the Dells over $6 billion while SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell and her husband contributed SpaceX stock valued at over $300 million. Aside from these standalone gifts, hundreds of institutions, companies, and philanthropists have made or pledged contributions. On July 9, just five days after these accounts went into effect, the popularity of the program was manifest:
@EricLDaugh. JUST IN: In a MASSIVE shock to the Fake News, Trump Accounts in 5 days have received a SURGE of +$125 MILLION DOLLARS for America’s children — that’s not even counting $1,000 seed money and wealthy donor contributions. 6.5 MILLION American children have accounts, and a vast majority of contributions are below $250, per Washington Examiner THIS IS BECOMING A HUGE WIN The benefits of this will be felt for generations. Imagine the compounding interest these kids will see when they are grown!
According to Washington Examiner: “Beyond the money itself, the Trump Accounts app has performed remarkably compared to other federal government tech rollouts, holding the top overall spot in the Apple App Store. Its average rating of 4.75 stars across nearly 3,500 reviews gives it better marks than the Robinhood app. For comparison, the 2013 rollout of the Affordable Care Act’s Healthcare.gov website was plagued by numerous technical glitches that were well documented in media reports at the time. A leaked internal memo from the Obama administration showed that only six individuals were able to enroll the first day the website went live, and there were just 248 enrollments by the end of the first 48 hours.
The Trump administration acknowledged anecdotal evidence that some Trump Accounts users are seeing errors but stressed that “99.9% of users have not encountered any hiccups and that customer support was working quickly with the 0.1% of cases that require assistance.” A Treasury Department official claimed that users have waited, on average, “0.2 seconds when contacting customer support by phone and 0.5 seconds when contacting via chat.”
Even some frequent critics of the president have given Trump Accounts glowing reviews. In a Wednesday appearance on SiriusXM’s The Clay Cane Show, Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) likened the program to baby bonds, calling it “one of the fastest ways that you can address both child poverty and the racial wealth gap.” “I will give this administration credit for this, is that we’ve had Democratic presidents and Republican presidents who have not been able to get this done, and it actually got done,” Moore added. “So I actually, this is actually a smart policy.”
Consider the genius of this program. It encourages millions of people, many of whom are not investors, to become actual stakeholders in our economy. (Not the pretend kind of stakeholder the left promotes — vague hordes of people with no skin in the game who are to be given a share of control.) Smart children will start to watch the stock market and learn about compounding and why it matters. For children who would not otherwise have assets in their youth for further education, to buy a car or residence, or start a business, this gives them a leg up once available only to those the beneficiaries of generational wealth.
DAVID SACKS: “One of the numbers that I saw that was kind of amazing… again, it just goes back to the power of compounding… Is that if a Trump Account had been maxed out and you have the standard market rate of return that we’ve had for, say the past 30 years… Then by age 28, that kid will be a millionaire.”
For some, other investment options might be more advantageous, but generally speaking, the overall benefits for society are huge and include: encouraging household savings to take advantage of the tax-deferred benefits; increasing the wealth and personal savings level of the beneficiaries. Kids under 18 might want to help reach that $5,000 annual contribution maximum by deferring spending to add to their accounts on their own from personal earnings (paper routes may be dying, but there’s babysitting and lawn cutting).
A few countries have some sort of saving programs to provide a financial boost for minors: the UK, Israel, Singapore, various Indian states, and Canada. They vary in different respects from each other. But the Trump Funds are uniquely American in that by specifying investment in equity funds and converting these funds to IRAs when the beneficiaries reach 18, they set the stage for long-term participation in the stock market, something worth encouraging from both an individual and national viewpoint.

“The nation’s two major teachers unions—the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—are cash machines for the Democratic Party.”

• Why Our Kids Don’t Learn (Star Parker)

Included in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, up to $1,700, for contributions to “Scholarship Granting Organizations” that parents can access and use toward paying for private school tuition and fees and other educational expenses. The provision is constructed such that states must choose to opt in to the program, which begins January 2027. As of this writing, per the IRS, 28 states have opted in. Of those 28, 25 are red states and three are blue—Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia. This partisan imbalance is no accident.

The nation’s two major teachers unions—the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—are cash machines for the Democratic Party. And the last thing they want is parents having any say in where their child receives their K-12 education. The unions have published an “Open Letter to our Democratic Governors” urging them to “say no to the Trump private voucher scheme.” Per the leaders of these two unions, the signatories of the letter, “Public education … is the foundation of a thriving democracy” and vouchers are a betrayal.
Amid the celebration of our nation’s 250th birthday, with recitals of the defining words of our founding declaration—our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—the leaders of the teachers unions declare it un-American that parents should have the right to choose how and where to educate their children. We all should justifiably shudder that minds like this influence the majority of our nation’s children. The results speak for themselves. The Programme for International Student Assessment, administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, tests 15-year-olds in 80 countries in math, science, and reading.
In the latest available scores, the top five countries are Singapore, China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. The United States ranks 18th behind Poland, Czechia, and Denmark. Per the OECD, U.S. education spending per student in 2025 was $20,387 compared to the OECD average of $15,022. U.S. education spending as a percent of gross domestic product was 5.8% compared to the OECD average of 4.7%. Per the World Bank, education spending as percent of GDP in Singapore, the country with the highest PISA score, was 2.2% in 2024, less than half that of the U.S.
Analysis done at the Cato Institute shows inflation-adjusted spending per student in the U.S. increased 140% from 1971 to 2019, while over the same period, test scores in math and reading for 17-year-olds barely moved. A May 2026 study by the Network Contagion Research Institute and the Gevura Fund, which have affiliations with Rutgers University and the University of Maryland, reports: “Combined NEA spending on political activities, lobbying, and contributions to outside organizations totals approximately $175 million in FY2025, nearly 4 times the $45 million spent on direct member representation.”
PAC records show that 90% of NEA candidate-directed spending and nearly all of AFT’s, has gone to Democrats consistently across decades.” A casual glance at the website of the NEA and the AFT barely turns up a hint about reading, math and science. Both are poster boards for the progressive political agenda. It is no wonder that scholarships and vouchers, tickets for parents and children to education freedom, is a nightmare for the teachers’ unions who are about control, not freedom.
A recent study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute ranks states by the strength and influence of their teachers’ unions. Among the top 25 states rated with the strongest teachers’ unions, only two—Ohio and West Virginia—have opted into the new tax-funded scholarship program. Why are so many of our youth embracing socialism and turning away from the principles of our founding? Look no further than the vice grip unions have on our public schools. Education freedom is vital to America’s future. The new tax-funded scholarship program is a major step in the right direction.

They sure put a lot of effort into this crime https://t.co/zo6areZrFX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2026

Elon Musk was right when he said OpenAI cannot be trusted.

• Apple: Accused OpenAI of stealing trade secrets through former Apple engineers to accelerate AI hardware development.

• xAI: Accused OpenAI of poaching employees to obtain Grok trade secrets, source code, and… pic.twitter.com/5MlKFzqFXW
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) July 10, 2026

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2076084863195807896?s=20

Never deleting this app. pic.twitter.com/v98oebFiGq
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) July 12, 2026

ELON MUSK IS CREATING COMPANIES THAT PUT AMERICA IN THE LEAD OF EVERYTHING

WHAT ARE YOU DOING ? https://t.co/MGz1w0dQDq pic.twitter.com/CpgN43fD7S
— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) July 11, 2026

I’m going to blow your mind. Are you ready? Hold on tight!

Dr. Oz and Nick Shirley just walked a single block in NYC and found double-digit pharmacies.

Dr. Oz: “I don’t think you could go anywhere in America and think this was normal unless there was a cash cow business feeding… pic.twitter.com/PWwCkgJ8zr
— jay plemons (@jayplemons) July 11, 2026

Elon Musk: "The strongest argument for us being in a simulation, probably being in a simulation,.40 years ago, we had Pong, like two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D simulations." pic.twitter.com/FfDZ3cepOc
— Joe Rogan Podcast News (@joeroganhq) July 11, 2026

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Debt Rattle November 25 2024

Nov 252024

November 25, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: Fauci, Kusturica, Lindsey Graham, mass deportations, Netanyahu, Nord Stream 2, Trump 49 Responses »

Caravaggio Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence 1600

• Majority of Americans Support Trump’s Mass Deportation Plans (RT)

• Can Armageddon Be Avoided? (Paul Craig Roberts)

• New Trump Admin Focus on Ukraine Conflict Resolution – Security Advisor (Sp.)

• Dialogue Is Only Way Out Of Ukraine Conflict – Merkel (RT)

• Stop Supporting War – Medvedev To Europe (RT)

• US and European Officials Discussed Giving Ukraine Nuclear Weapons (Antiwar)

• France Wants To ‘Finish Off’ Ukraine – Zakharova (RT)

• Most Ukrainian Soldiers Ready To Give Up Territory – The Economist (RT)

• Ukraine Can Make America Rich – Lindsey Graham (RT)

• Lindsey Graham Threatens Allies With Sanctions For Netanyahu Arrest (Sp.)

• Netanyahu ‘Wanted’: A Landmark Legal Moment In The Palestinian Struggle (Mehdi)

• Crypto Won the 2024 Election (ET)

• US Suffered ‘Worst Telecom Hack’ In History – Senator (RT)

• US Unlikely to Let American Investor Buy Nord Stream 2 (Sp.)

• Film Director Kusturica Thanks RT For Opening His Eyes On America (RT)

• Bombshell Fauci Documentary Nails The Whole COVID Charade (ZH)

Trump

Zelensky and Putin must meet with me immediately at get this war solved! Ukraine has just launched 5 ballistic US ATACMS missiles at Kursk, Russia. This must stop! Joe Biden and NATO are pushing the United Stated into WWIII! pic.twitter.com/YI9CCyNXzZ

— Donald J. Trump – Parody (@realDonParody) November 23, 2024

Tucker

Wow. Look at that. Real journalism. pic.twitter.com/y4OBHyBwUt

— Dr. C (@OG_DrC) November 23, 2024

Rogan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1860499743039979980

Rogan moon landing

Joe Rogan wrecking NASA’s version of the pretend moon landing for 5 minutes straight is truly delicious.

I think we’re quickly reaching point of full disclosure. NASA soon will have no choice. pic.twitter.com/sLEUZWBsdn

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) November 23, 2024

Shanahan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1860562968150159568

Tucker Maddow

Elon Musk should buy MSNBC and have Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow co-host a show together.

Just look at this chemistry. pic.twitter.com/Pgl3UMbSqO

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 23, 2024

Bakery
https://twitter.com/i/status/1860497525167264173

McCaul
https://twitter.com/i/status/1860443088629694611

“..82% of respondents want Trump to use immigration and border patrol agencies to carry out the deportations, while 40% support the use of the US military.”

• Majority of Americans Support Trump’s Mass Deportation Plans (RT)

Some 57% of Americans approve of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed deportation of every single illegal immigrant in the US, a CBS News poll has found. Democrat mayors and governors have vowed to resist the incoming president’s plans. Published on Sunday, the poll found broad satisfaction with Trump’s defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris in this month’s presidential election, with 55% of respondents saying that they felt ‘happy’ or ‘satisfied’ with the result, and 44% feeling ‘angry’ or ‘dissatisfied’. The poll also found that 57% of respondents approve of one of Trump’s most controversial proposals: the deportation of all immigrants in the US illegally. 43% disapprove of the policy. Trump has promised since last year that, if elected, he would lead “the largest deportation operation in American history.”

With anywhere from 11 million to 35 million illegal immigrants living in the US, Trump’s proposed border czar, Tom Homan, has said that those who commit crimes in the country or otherwise threaten national security will be prioritized for deportation. The incoming president said before the election that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to “remove all known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States.” This law gives the president authority to bypass immigration courts, although critics argue that it only applies when the US is at war with a foreign government and cannot be used to deal with transnational gangs and their members. Last week, Trump shared an article on his Truth Social platform suggesting that he would declare a national emergency and “use military assets to reverse the [President Joe] Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.”

According to the CBS poll, 82% of respondents want Trump to use immigration and border patrol agencies to carry out the deportations, while 40% support the use of the US military. Harris repeatedly criticized Trump’s deportation plans on the campaign trail, arguing that it would “tear families apart.” Speaking to CBS last month, Homan dismissed this concern, declaring that “families can be deported together.” Several Democrat mayors and governors have pledged to resist any deportation operation, with Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey stating that she would “absolutely not” allow state police to assist federal immigration agents, and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy telling reporters that his administration would take any “action we deem to be necessary” to stymie Trump’s plans. ”If you’re not going to help us, get the hell out of the way because we’re going to do it,” Homan told Fox News earlier this month.

Is the West, Lost in its Own Lies, Trapped in the Pending Disaster Washington Has Brewed?

• Can Armageddon Be Avoided? (Paul Craig Roberts)

The situation in the world is more threatening than ever before. Putin has had to make it clear that a continuation of missile attacks on Russia will result in retribution. The new missile Putin has revealed can destroy all US and NATO military forces in the West and Middle East without the use of nuclear warheads. If the US then goes nuclear, Russian nuclear forces will destroy the entirety of the West. Indeed, Steve Starr shows that the entire world will be the victim of American psychopaths. In the face of such a warning, only totally irresponsible psychopaths would persist. The sway of psychopaths over the US and Europe means we have to be concerned that Washington will “test the waters” by expending the permissible area and distance for the ATACMs to be fired into Russia. I have been convinced that it would come to this crisis from day one of Putin’s limited military operation.

Russia needed to immediately knock Ukraine out before the West could get involved. Now the West’s prestige is on the line. Putin tolerated provocations in order to avoid widening the conflict, but his patience with the West backfired as it resulted in the belief that Putin’s warnings are meaningless as “he never does anything.” Putin has backed up as far as he can. His back is against the wall. Putin cannot accept missiles being fired into Russia by the US and NATO. At this point only psychopaths would “test the waters” which means playing with nuclear armageddon. But psychopaths are in charge. The Ukraine conflict was prepared and unleashed by US neoconservatives in the belief that it would destabilize Russia and perhaps lead to the breakup of the Russian Federation. Putin should not have let it go as far as he did before he acted. Putin was too slow to realize that Washington intends Russia’s destruction.

That a few Zionist neoconservatives can push the world to the brink in their pursuit of US hegemony indicates the failure of Western governance. The situation in the Middle East is equally dangerous. It is being driven by clearing out obstacles to Greater Israel and Washington’s desire to control oil flows and waterways. A bad outcome seems inevitable, because the Western world is lost in the lies of its official narrative. There is no reality recognition. If you read Johnson’s Russian List, a daily collection of foreign affairs and military articles by “experts,” what you mainly see is stupidity and self-delusion. Most of the authors are supported in one way or the other by military/security grants, so there is no questioning. To tell the truth in the Western world today you must be independent. Without readers’ support of truth-telling websites, there will be no truth.

Propaganda has implanted the mistaken belief that Russia, China, and Iran are enemies that must be opposed and defeated. Yet Russia, China, and Iran have taken no hostile actions against the West. All three have accepted illegally imposed sanctions and other hostile actions without responding in kind. The Pentagon and the US military/security complex see in their image of the enemies that propaganda has created for the West a danger that must be countered by a nuclear buildup. One trillion dollars are to be spent “modernizing” nuclear weapons whose only possible use is world destruction. No thought and no attention is given to defusing the situation. Remember, in 2016 the CIA, FBI, and Deep State turned violently on President Trump when he said he intended to defuse the situation by normalizing relations with Russia. The Establishment’s response was “Russiagate,” impeachments, indictments.

Without enemies, the profits and power of the military/security complex diminish. Now the Establishment is trying to saddle President Trump with a war with Russia as he enters office. This is the work of psychopaths. When Americans accepted the stolen 2020 election, they accepted the reign of psychopaths who define peace as Washington’s hegemony. Any government in the way of Washington’s hegemony is defined as an enemy. They are enemies not because they threaten the US. They are enemies because they insist on their independence from Washington’s hegemony. Americans have been deceived that Russia, China, and Iran are enemies out to get them. Belief in this lie makes the Western world blind to the fact that its leaders are evil psychopaths leading the world to Armageddon.

“All of our allies and partners need to be carrying this burden going forward..”

• New Trump Admin Focus on Ukraine Conflict Resolution – Security Advisor (Sp.)

Donald Trump’s incoming administration plans to prioritize efforts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine starting in January 2025, said Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security advisor. “The president-elect has been very concerned about the escalation and where it’s all going,” Waltz said in an interview with Fox News, when asked about Trump’s reaction to the crisis escalation. “And so what we need to be discussing is who’s at that table, whether it’s an agreement, an armistice, how to get both sides to the table, and then what’s the framework of a deal. That’s what we’ll be working with this administration until January and then beyond,” he highlighted.

According to Waltz, European countries are expected to play a “key role” in the negotiation process. “All of our allies and partners need to be carrying this burden going forward,” the congressman emphasized. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov previously noted that Biden’s outgoing administration is doing everything it can to escalate the Ukraine conflict and keep it going.

Mike Waltz, the incoming National Security Advisor, says he has met with Jake Sullivan, the current National Security Advisor, and declares the Trump and Biden administrations are "hand in glove" and "one team" — after a week in which Biden introduced huge escalations in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/4oQRQnqVCT

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 24, 2024

“..at a certain moment, and the responsible people today have to determine that moment, we will need conversations.”

• Dialogue Is Only Way Out Of Ukraine Conflict – Merkel (RT)

Western nations will eventually have to engage in dialogue with Russia to put an end to the Ukraine conflict, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said. She added that Kiev’s backers should ensure that Ukraine remains independent following the cessation of hostilities. Merkel served as chancellor from 2005 to 2021, and was one of the guarantors of the 2014-15 Minsk agreements, which aimed to reintegrate Donbass into Ukraine, while granting the region greater autonomy. In 2022, she admitted that the accords had in fact been an “attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its military. In an interview with the UK’s Sunday Times published on Saturday, Merkel said she was generally supportive of the Ukraine policies of the current German government, as well as those of the EU. Since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, Berlin has emerged as the top provider of military aid to Kiev in Europe, second only to the US globally.

The former chancellor, however, noted that “at a certain moment, and the responsible people today have to determine that moment, we will need conversations.” On Thursday, Die Zeit published excerpts from Merkel’s new book titled ‘Freedom: Memories 1954-2021’. In it, she recounts the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, where Ukraine and Georgia’s applications for Membership Action Plans were put up for discussion. The then-chancellor opposed the idea at the time, arguing that the move would be seen as a provocation by Russia, with the potential applicants not being provided with any meaningful security guarantees. While a number of officials, including Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, have since criticized Merkel for her stance, she stands firmly by her view to this day, as evidenced by her memoirs.

Moscow has repeatedly indicated a willingness to negotiate a settlement with Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently reiterated that any peace talks should be based on the agreements reached in Istanbul in 2022, which envisaged a neutral, non-aligned status for Ukraine, as well as certain restrictions on deploying foreign weaponry. However, the Kremlin has also stated that any further negotiations must take into account the “reality on the ground.” This implies that Ukraine is expected to make territorial concessions, rather than retaking the regions that have voluntarily joined Russia, including the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions, as well as Crimea.

“The damage would be unacceptable, it is impossible to intercept them with modern means, and we are talking about a matter of minutes..”

• Stop Supporting War – Medvedev To Europe (RT)

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has issued a stark warning to European nations that continue to support Kiev. In a Telegram post on Sunday, Medvedev referenced the recent deployment of Russia’s Oreshnik hypersonic missile system against a Ukrainian military facility. “Europe is wondering what damage the system could cause if the warheads are nuclear, whether it is possible to shoot down these missiles, and how quickly they would reach the capitals of the Old World. The answer: The damage would be unacceptable, it is impossible to intercept them with modern means, and we are talking about a matter of minutes,” Medvedev wrote. “Bomb shelters will not help, so the only hope is that kind Russia will warn in advance about the launches. Therefore, it is better to stop supporting the war,” he added.

Earlier this week, Medvedev shared a video showing an Oreshnik missile strike on a Ukrainian defense industrial facility in Dnepropetrovsk (known as Dnipro in Ukraine). The footage, originally published by Ukrainian media, shows several warheads impacting the military site at night. Medvedev accompanied the video with a post on X, saying, “So, that’s what you wanted? Well, you’ve damn well got it!” In a public address on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the use of Oreshnik missiles against a Ukrainian military-industrial facility. He described the strike as a direct response to Ukrainian attacks on internationally-recognized Russian territory earlier in the week, which involved US-made ATACMS and HIMARS systems, as well as British-made Storm Shadow missiles. Putin accused the US and NATO of intentionally escalating the conflict and stated that Russia would fulfill all of its military objectives, regardless of the weapons used by Kiev.

“Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

• US and European Officials Discussed Giving Ukraine Nuclear Weapons (Antiwar)

According to the New York Times, US and European officials have discussed a range of options they believe will deter Russia from taking more Ukrainian territory, including providing Kiev with nuclear weapons. The outlet reports that Western officials believe the Kremlin will not significantly escalate the war before Donald Trump is sworn in as President in January. Following the election of Trump earlier this month, the US and its NATO allies began taking steps to rush weapons to Ukraine and give Kiev the ability to strike targets inside Russian territory with long-range weapons. American officials who were briefed on the intelligence community’s assessments told the Times that weapons will not alter the challenging situation that Kiev is currently facing.

“US spy agencies have assessed that speeding up the provisions of weapons, ammunition and matériel for Ukraine will do little to change the course of the war in the short term,” the Times reports. Desperate to bolster Ukraine’s standing in the war before the transition of power on January 20, the Biden administration is looking at a range of serious escalations. “US and European officials are discussing deterrence as a possible security guarantee for Ukraine, such as stockpiling a conventional arsenal sufficient to strike a punishing blow if Russia violates a cease-fire.” The article continues, “Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union.” According to some officials who spoke with the Times, the administration believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t significantly escalate the war until Trump returns to the Oval Office.

“But the escalation risk of allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with US-supplied weaponry has diminished with the election of Mr. Trump,” adding,” Biden administration officials believe, calculating that Putin of Russia knows he has to wait only two months for the new administration.” That assessment is based on the belief that Trump and his incoming Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, will take a more favorable stance on Russia. However, Trump proved to be a Russia-hawk during his first administration by ramping up sanctions on Moscow, providing lethal arms to Ukraine, and expelling a large number of Russian diplomats from the US.

In September, Putin said he preferred Vice President Kamala Harris to win the White House. “Trump has imposed as many sanctions on Russia as any president has ever imposed before, and if Harris is doing well, perhaps she will refrain from such actions,” he explained. Much of the American political class has cast Trump and Gabbard as agents of Russia. However, extensive investigations into Trump’s ties to the Kremlin have come up empty. Additionally, the Times reported last week that there was no evidence Gabbard was in any way an asset of Putin.

“This is not support for Ukraine, but rather it is a way to finish it off..”

• France Wants To ‘Finish Off’ Ukraine – Zakharova (RT)

France’s greenlight for Kiev strikes on internationally-recognized Russian territory will only hurt Ukraine and further escalate the conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Saturday. Her remarks followed a statement by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot. In an interview with the BBC, Barrot said that Paris does “not set and express red lines” on its support for Kiev, and that long-range strikes on Russian soil may be carried out by Ukraine “in the logics of self-defense.” “This is not support for Ukraine, but rather it is a way to finish it off,” Zakharova told TASS, referring to Barrot’s statements. The French minister did not confirm whether missiles from his country had already been used by Kiev for long-range strikes on Russia. When asked by the BBC whether his “no red lines” comment meant Paris could send French troops to fight alongside Ukrainians, he said he “does not discard any option.”

Barrot’s comments came mere days after Ukraine struck Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions with US-made ATACMS and British Storm Shadows. The attacks followed a reported decision by outgoing US President Joe Biden’s administration to greenlight Kiev’s use of long-range US-supplied weaponry to hit areas Washington recognizes as Russia. The Kremlin slammed the reported decision as a deliberate escalation of the conflict and as making the US and NATO direct participants. Earlier this week, Vladimir Putin said that the “regional” Ukraine conflict has now “assumed elements of a global nature,” and warned that further attacks with Western weapons would result in retaliatory strikes on targets of Moscow’s choosing.

In response, the Russian military on Thursday test-fired a new cutting-edge hypersonic ballistic missile, targeting a military industrial facility in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk (called Dnipro in Ukraine). The nuclear-capable missile, called the Oreshnik, cannot be intercepted by existing Western missile defense systems, and is capable of reaching targets across Europe within minutes, Sergey Karakayev, commander of Russia’s strategic missile forces, told TASS earlier this week. The new weapon will be mass produced and incorporated into Russia’s arsenal in the coming months.

“Long out of willing recruits..”

• Most Ukrainian Soldiers Ready To Give Up Territory – The Economist (RT)

Ukrainian troops are growing more open to the prospect of territorial concessions and a ceasefire amid flagging morale and mounting pressure from Russian forces, The Economist reported on Sunday, citing sources from Ukraine. Russian forces are advancing in Donbass at a rate unseen since the earliest days of the conflict, the magazine noted. Earlier in November, the Russian Defense Ministry reported the liberation of more than a dozen settlements in Russia’s Donetsk Region and Ukraine’s Kharkov Region. The problems faced by the Ukrainian army are exacerbated by its worsening manpower issues, The Economist wrote. “Long out of willing recruits,” the conscription push has met barely two-thirds of its target, the magazine said, citing one Ukrainian official as worried that the situation could become “irretrievable” by springtime. Recruits that are pressed into service are more often than not over the age of 45, unhealthy and unmotivated, The Economist said, citing a Ukrainian officer.

The worsening battlefield situation coupled with these issues, and exacerbated by a lack of rotation, is reportedly taking a toll on morale. Fewer and fewer soldiers are willing to “fight to the end” and are less against the idea of giving up territories, one officer told The Economist. “It’s not even 50-50 any more, but 30-70.” In late October, Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksey Goncharenko claimed that Kiev is seeking to conscript an additional 160,000 people in the following three months, amid mounting losses and desertions. Soon afterwards, Ukrainian media reported that more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have deserted or left their positions without leave since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. In spring this year, faced with heavy casualties on the battlefield, Ukraine lowered the mobilization age from 27 to 25 and increased the penalties for draft dodgers.

In addition, the tightened conscription rules require men to report to the authorities for “data validation,” which often results in them being immediately pressed into service and sent to the front lines. Videos circulating on social media show recruitment officers trying to catch Ukrainian men in public, often leading to violent confrontations. In October, a Ukrainian MP warned of a legal crackdown on social media against people seeking to aid men in avoiding conscription officers. While Moscow has said it is open to peace negotiations, it has stressed that they must account for the “reality on the ground.” As Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out the possibility of giving up the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions, as well as Crimea, a peace deal would have to include territorial concessions by Ukraine. All five regions joined Russia after voting in a series of referendums.

“Donald Trump is going to do a deal to get our money back, to enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals. A good deal for Ukraine and us.”

• Ukraine Can Make America Rich – Lindsey Graham (RT)

Ukraine could be extremely useful to the US because it is brimming with valuable natural resources and is willing to negotiate an agreement with Washington on extraction, Senator Lindsey Graham has said. The Republican senator from South Carolina told Fox News that the Ukraine conflict is ultimately “about money.” An extract of the interview was published on the senator’s YouTube channel on Wednesday. “You know that the richest country in all of Europe for rare earth minerals is Ukraine?” he said, estimating the worth at 2 to 7 trillion dollars. Graham added that Ukraine is ready to “do a deal with us,” but not Russia. “So it’s in our interest to make sure that Russia doesn’t take over the place,” he said, describing Ukraine as the “breadbasket of the world.” “We can make money and have an economic relationship with Ukraine. It would be very beneficial to us, with peace,” Graham went on to say.

“Donald Trump is going to do a deal to get our money back, to enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals. A good deal for Ukraine and us.” The president-elect, he added, will also help settle the conflict by concluding an “honorable deal” that would avoid “humiliating” Russian President Vladimir Putin and setting the stage for another conflict. “Donald Trump knows how to end wars. All Joe Biden knows how to do is start wars,” he said. Graham is known for his hawkish stance on aiding Ukraine and containing Moscow. In February, he was added to Russia’s list of ‘terrorists and extremists’, after the senator advocated for designating Russia as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’. In 2023, Moscow expressed outrage over Graham’s remarks during a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, when he said: “The Russians are dying. The best money we’ve ever spent.”

In mid-October, Zelensky presented his ‘victory plan,’ which stated that Kiev is ready to sign with its Western backers “a special agreement on the joint protection of the available critical resources” in Ukraine. Earlier this month, Mikhail Podoliak, a top adviser to Zelensky, also stressed that Ukraine has “deposits of rare minerals, such as lithium and titanium, which we can exploit together [with the US].” Trump has vowed to quickly end the Ukraine conflict. Media reports have suggested that he may try to force Ukraine to drop its NATO ambitions and negotiate a freeze of the conflict. Moscow has ruled out a freeze along the current front line, insisting that all the objectives of its military operation must be achieved.

“Moscow’s position: a settlement is only possible on the basis of the formula approved by the UN Security Council with the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem.”

• Lindsey Graham Threatens Allies With Sanctions For Netanyahu Arrest (Sp.)

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has threatened US allies with sanctions if they try to help the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “To any ally — Canada, Britain, Germany, France — if you try to help the ICC, we’re gonna sanction you,” the senator said on Fox News. When asked about the nature of such sanctions, Graham doubled down on his threat, saying the US should “crush” the economies of countries that support the ICC’s efforts. On Thursday, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant over alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip. The court also dismissed Israel’s objections to its jurisdiction over such cases. Israel has consistently challenged the ICC’s authority to hear cases related to Palestine as a whole. US President Joe Biden called the ICC’s decision “outrageous.”

Since October 1, Israel has been conducting a ground operation against the forces of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon and continues aerial bombardment of the neighboring country, where more than 2,500 people have already been killed, including leaders of the Shiite movement, and more than a million people have become refugees. Despite losses, including in the command staff, Hezbollah is waging ground battles and does not stop firing rockets at Israeli territory. On October 7, 2023, Israel was subjected to an unprecedented rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. After that, Hamas militants penetrated the border areas, opened fire on the military and civilians, and took more than 200 hostages. According to the authorities, about 1,200 people were killed on the Israeli side.

In response, the Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Iron Swords, which included strikes on civilian targets, and announced a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip: supplies of water, electricity, fuel, food, and medicine were stopped. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 43,500 Palestinians have died since the beginning of the conflict, and over 102,000 have been injured. The Russian Foreign Ministry called on the parties to cease hostilities. According to Moscow’s position, a settlement is only possible on the basis of the formula approved by the UN Security Council with the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem.

“We support international courts, and we apply their warrants..”

“..the crime of exterminating the Palestinian people cannot go unpunished..”

• Netanyahu ‘Wanted’: A Landmark Legal Moment In The Palestinian Struggle (Mehdi)

“The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision is one of the largest legal developments in the history of Israel. The 124 member states of the court will be legally obligated to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they enter its territory … and it may have broader repercussions that limit the ability of third parties to cooperate with the Israeli army.” This is how Eliav Lieblich, a professor of international law at Tel Aviv University, summarized the potential consequences of the ICC issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The decision marks a historic step toward international justice for the Palestinian cause after decades of impunity for Israeli leadership, especially given the immense pressure from Tel Aviv and its US ally on the ICC’s prosecutor and judges.

The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant hold them accountable for acts of torture, violence, murder, rape, and the destruction of property by occupation forces under their command. The court found “reasonable grounds to believe that the defendants intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population of Gaza of things necessary for their survival, such as food, water, medicines, and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity, from at least 8 October 2023 until May 20, 2024.” It also noted that “by restricting or preventing the arrival of medical supplies and medicines to Gaza – including anesthesia materials and machines – the two defendants are responsible for inflicting great suffering through inhumane acts against people in need of treatment.” Can the arrest warrants be enforced?

The ICC lacks its own enforcement arm, relying on member states to act. Once arrest warrants are issued, they become binding for the 124 countries that are party to the Rome Statute. If Netanyahu or Gallant visit any of these countries, local authorities are obligated to detain them and send them to The Hague. History has shown that such warrants significantly limit travel options for indicted leaders, who risk arrest in participating countries. But what happens if some countries refuse to comply? International law expert Dr Mohamed Habhab informs The Cradle that the ICC’s decisions are binding on its General Assembly members, with three possible responses if a country refuses to implement the warrants:

First, if the UN Security Council refers a case to the ICC, the Security Council can take further action against countries that do not comply with the court’s decision. This means that the UNSC has the authority to impose measures or sanctions on non-compliant countries to ensure enforcement of the arrest warrants. Second, when the prosecutor initiates a case, the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute can take measures against countries that refuse to comply. This means that the Assembly, which consists of representatives from all member countries, can put pressure on non-compliant states by taking appropriate actions, which may include diplomatic measures or sanctions. Third, if member states themselves refer a case to the ICC, as happened in the case of the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, actions can be pursued either through the Assembly of States Parties or through the UNSC.

This means that the referring member states, along with the Assembly, can collectively push for compliance and ensure that the arrest warrants are implemented. Habhab believes that although it is unlikely that Netanyahu will be seen behind bars anytime soon, the court’s decision is a “moral victory” for the Palestinian cause, and can be used to build global public opinion against the occupation state. Moreover, legally, it could pave the way for more states to compile joint cases over other crimes committed by Israeli forces. In addition to the initial referral by Palestine, the ICC has received further referrals from South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, Djibouti, Chile, and Mexico, indicating a growing international effort to hold Israel accountable for its egregious and widespread criminality in Gaza. While Netanyahu and Gallant may avoid arrest in Israel-allied countries, the ICC warrants create a major diplomatic problem for Tel Aviv.

Austria’s foreign minister called the arrest warrants “incomprehensible and ludicrous,” but nonetheless reiterated his country’s commitment to international law. Similarly, Italy’s defense minister said Italy would fulfill the ICC’s demand if Netanyahu or Gallant arrived, despite calling the ruling “wrong.” The country’s foreign minister also stated, “We support the ICC … the court must play a legal role and not a political role.” Ireland’s Prime Minister Simon Harris responded “Yes, absolutely,” when asked if Ireland would arrest Netanyahu. “We support international courts, and we apply their warrants,” he said. The Deputy Prime Minister of Spain and Minister of Labor also supported this position, stressing that Spain always stands on the side of justice and international law, and that the crime of exterminating the Palestinian people cannot go unpunished.

“[Washington] received a clear message that being anti-crypto is a good way to end your career..”

• Crypto Won the 2024 Election (ET)

Although President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party swept the 2024 general election, the cryptocurrency industry feels it is the real winner. Powered by donations from some of the biggest figures in cryptocurrency and venture capital, three political action committees poured more than $100 million into efforts to influence the 2024 election. “This election was a huge win for crypto,” co-founder and CEO of Coinbase Global Inc. Brian Armstrong wrote on Nov. 7 in an article on X. Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2012, donated about $55 million to the super PAC Fairshake, according to Federal Election Commission records. Armstrong personally donated $1 million. As Armstrong wrote, the industry had much to celebrate in early November. It saw its preferred candidates take the White House and win key seats in both houses of Congress.

He declared that the 119th Congress will be the “most pro-crypto Congress ever.” In his message, Coinbase’s leader wrote something that is usually implied but rarely said in the world of political spending, too. “[Washington] received a clear message that being anti-crypto is a good way to end your career,” Armstrong said. Twenty years ago, few people had heard of cryptocurrency—a term used to refer to decentralized digital currencies as opposed to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that are controlled and backed by a government or central bank. One week after the Nov. 5 election, a Bitcoin was trading for more than $89,000. Gold, by comparison, traded for about $2,600 an ounce on the same day.

Between 2007 and 2009, a person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto conceived of and launched Bitcoin. It was a new type of digital money secured via encryption technology. Unlike traditional currency, Bitcoin can transfer value online without a bank or a payment processor. It is not backed by any government, central bank fiat currency, or physical asset. Bitcoin began as an obscure novelty worth less than 10 cents per token. However, its price has exploded in the last decade, creating significant public interest in the digital asset. According to the crypto website Coinranking, as of Nov. 13, Bitcoin’s market capitalization was about $1.83 trillion. Nevertheless, public opinion polling shows that a majority of Americans are not confident in cryptocurrency as an investment. A Pew Research Center study published in October found that just 5 percent of the people it surveyed in February said they were “very” or “extremely” confident in the reliability and safety of cryptocurrency.

The same report found that 17 percent of Americans have ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency. As an investment, about 38 percent of respondents said cryptocurrency has done “worse than expected.” Rick Claypool, the research director in the president’s office of Public Citizen, told The Epoch Times that cryptocurrency, generally, is an extremely volatile investment vehicle without any intrinsic value—one that is now very risky for the average investor. Public Citizen, founded in 1971, is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. In May, it published a report describing the cryptocurrency industry’s investment in politics as part of a “strategy of combating enforcement crackdowns and designing a regulatory system that meets the industry’s specifications.”

“..Beijing-linked hacking group ‘Salt Typhoon’..”

• US Suffered ‘Worst Telecom Hack’ In History – Senator (RT)

National security advisers and other senior officials from the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden held a meeting with top executives from major telecommunications companies on Friday to discuss what is being described as “by far” the worst breach in the country’s history. Earlier this month, the US authorities accused alleged Beijing-linked hacking group ‘Salt Typhoon’ of intercepting surveillance data gathered and stored by the telecoms for American law enforcement agencies. The perpetrators allegedly intercepted text messages and audio from an unknown number of calls during a large-scale operation that lasted for months. Senator Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the breach the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history – by far,” following a hearing this week. “The barn door is still wide open, or mostly open.”

On Friday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger hosted a meeting with the telecommunications industry at the White House, though it is unclear who exactly was present. “The meeting was an opportunity to hear from telecommunications sector executives about how the US government can partner with and support the private sector in hardening against sophisticated nation-state attacks,” the White House said in a statement. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint statement on November 13, blaming the intrusion on China and admitting that the stolen information had been gathered and stored as part of “legal” surveillance on American suspects.

“Specifically, we have identified that PRC-affiliated actors have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies to enable the theft of customer call record data, the compromise of private communications of a limited number of individuals primarily involved in government or political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to US law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders,” they wrote. The scope of the breach is still under investigation. Reports indicate that fewer than 150 victims have been notified by the FBI so far, most of whom are located in the Washington DC area. However, since those affected likely called or texted numerous people, the number of records accessed by hackers could be significantly higher.

An unnamed adviser to the campaign of President-elect Donald Trump is also said to be among those whose conversations were intercepted, according to a report last month by the Washington Post. It remains unclear whether the adviser’s information was also “subject to US law enforcement requests.” In 2016, the FBI used the fabricated Steele Dossier to obtain court permission to spy on Trump’s campaign and undermine his presidency. Beijing has repeatedly denied hacking allegations and claims by Washington that it is attempting to meddle in the US electoral process. The Chinese Embassy in Washington previously stated that it was unaware of the activities of ‘Salt Typhoon’ and accused the US of fabricating evidence of Beijing’s involvement in cyberattacks to “smear China.”

I still don’t get who they think they would pay for it.

• US Unlikely to Let American Investor Buy Nord Stream 2 (Sp.)

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipeline network was rocked by explosions in September 2022, just months after President Joe Biden threatened to “bring an end” to the energy project in the event of an escalation in Ukraine. Now, a US investor reportedly wants to buy Nord Stream 2. Sputnik asked a renowned economist what this means. If the Ukraine crisis were to end, there would “likely…be huge pressure to get the pipelines repaired” from a Europe starved of energy. “Any new owner would become immensely rich,” the economist stressed.government, widely suspected of playing an instrumental role in the energy infrastructure’s sabotage, would be unlikely to allow it, veteran British economist Dr. Rodney Shakespeare told Sputnik. “America destroyed the pipelines because secret American policy is to keep Germany and Europe dependent on (expensive) American gas supplies. So the businessman is unlikely to get permission,” Shakespeare, a visiting scholar at Indonesia’s Trisakti University and co-founder of the Global Justice Movement, explained.

If the Ukrainian crisis were to end, there would “likely…be huge pressure to get the pipelines repaired” from a Europe starved of energy. “Any new owner would become immensely rich,” the economist stressed. But even then, Shakespeare warned that given the hostility of US policy toward the project, there’s no guarantee that the repaired pipelines wouldn’t “be blown up again.” “My guess is that the businessman will not get permission and that the risk of deliberate destruction in future is such that the pipes will not get repaired,” Shakespeare said. Lynch reportedly applied for a license with the US Treasury that would allow him to negotiate initiating repair work on the damaged $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline with entities under US sanctions, and has reportedly lobbied officials to allow him to invest in the damaged pipeline network to secure “American and European control over European energy supply for the rest of the fossil-fuel era.”

Nord Stream 2 AG is owned by a subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, with a consortium of five European energy companies financing to the project. A Swiss court has repeatedly extended the moratorium on Nord Stream 2 AG’s bankruptcy, most recently until January 2025. It’s unclear whether Russia would ever allow foreign investors, particularly from unfriendly countries, to gain a stake in the project. Nord Stream 2 was completed in September 2021, but never commissioned amid heavy US pressure on its European NATO allies to wean themselves off reliance on cheap and dependable Russian energy in favor of more costly US liquefied natural gas exports to Europe. In September 2022, three of four strings of the combined Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline networks were damaged in a series of explosions, causing the largest-ever man-made release of methane and deprived Europe of the capacity to import up to 110 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year.

In December 2022, a source told US media that repairing the damaged energy infrastructure could cost $500 million or more to repair, and that consultants were engaged in research into how long the damaged pipes could withstand exposure to saltwater. In February 2023, veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh alleged, citing insider information, that US Navy divers carried out the sabotage attack targeting Nord Stream. US officials dismissed these allegations, and maintain that Russia may have blown up its own pipeline. “I don’t want to get our country in trouble, so I won’t answer…But I can tell you who it wasn’t – Russia. It wasn’t Russia,” President-elect Donald Trump told US media in April 2023. “How about when they blamed Russia. You know they said ‘Russia blew up their own pipeline.’ You got a kick out of that one too,” Trump said.

After the release of Hersh’s bombshell story, US and German media have coordinated the release of a series of articles alleging that amateur Ukrainian saboteurs, not the US Navy, was responsible for the attack on Nord Stream. In an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin said it was “clear to the whole world” that the US was responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage. Germany’s silence on the matter shows that its leaders are “guided by the interests of the collective West rather than its [own] national interests,” Putin added.

“I saw an America that is not just Brad Pitt and George Clooney, but an America that has around 40,000-50,000 people without [a] home, and that’s only California..”

• Film Director Kusturica Thanks RT For Opening His Eyes On America (RT)

Renowned Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica has lauded RT for covering topics sidelined by other media, and particularly for showing him aspects of life in the US that are glossed over by Hollywood and official narratives. The director was speaking at an RT international film festival featuring dozens of documentaries on the Ukraine conflict. The event dubbed ‘RT.Doc: The Age of Our Heroes’ kicked off on Friday in the Serbian village of Drvengrad in the west of the country. The village was originally built by Kusturica as a film set two decades ago and has since become a venue for film and music festivals, as well as a tourist attraction. Speaking at the festival, Kusturica described documentaries as the very essence of television.

“[The] actual idea of television can be found exclusively in documentary programs,” he said, adding that various TV formats like news or other information programs tend to lean towards one side or another when covering certain events. Documentaries, on the other hand, demonstrate “the truth about the meaning of television” and are “every television’s… strongest program.” He explained that the festival provides a chance to see such works. The filmmaker also specifically praised documentaries produced by RT, saying that they showed him things he had not even thought about, particularly when it comes to the US. “Thanks to Russia Today, I saw an America that is not just Brad Pitt and George Clooney, but an America that has around 40,000-50,000 people without [a] home, and that’s only California,” Kusturica said.

“I got to know the side of America that didn’t exist in my thoughts, yet alone in those films that I loved from the 70s.” RT covers topics from various parts of the globe, including Europe, the US and Africa, opening “a new view for us in the whole world,” according to the director. He then expressed his hope that Drvengrad would be able to host “another good film festival” in this “most important” genre and thanked the event organizers for choosing the venue. The festival, which runs through Sunday, features more than 60 documentaries, including those filmed by Russian war correspondents, as well as Italian, French, and US crews. Kusturica made one of them himself. His documentary focuses on Kiev’s persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which it accuses of having ties to Russia.

“Tony believed that the best way to prepare for the next pandemic, was to create it..”

• Bombshell Fauci Documentary Nails The Whole COVID Charade (ZH)

A new must-watch documentary by two-time Peabody Award-winning and four-time Emmy nominated director Jenner Furst, a self-described progressive who has broken with the Democratic party, ties it all together. In early 2020, Furst was contacted to direct a puff piece on former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci. The project was scrapped, however three years later, Furst began investigating what actually happened and created “Thank You, Dr. Fauci” – a project which has received virtually no press coverage, and even Rotten Tomatoes critics won’t touch.

Next week, a documentary called “Thank You, Dr. Fauci is releasing and will expose everything you have ever wanted to know about the worst doctor this country has ever known.

Meta has already blocked the trailer from airing.

Make sure you share this clip and get ready for what… pic.twitter.com/OrR2IXta1i

— Joey Mannarino (@JoeyMannarinoUS) October 26, 2024

If you’re thinking ‘you had me at Fauci’ and just want to watch it, a free preview of “Thank You, Dr. Fauci” is available, and the film can be rented directly on the film’s website, or by using Vimeo On-Demand or Gathr. People can also use Gathr to Book Private Screenings and Partner on TVOD Sales. If you’re like Elon Musk and you believe that ‘Prosecute / Fauci’ should be your pronouns, this is what you need to watch to understand why we should prosecute Fauci. While it’s difficult enough to find “Thank You, Dr. Fauci” thanks to search engine shadowbans and downrankings, perhaps the most notable form of censorship is the ongoing media blackout of the film according to Furst – whose previous work has been heavily reviewed, critically acclaimed, and streamed across Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Paramount.

But not this one. “The media blackout of the film just proves that the real Covid story is still highly censored,” Furst told ZeroHedge, adding “Journalists still can’t cover Covid truthfully at major outlets, and the problem is way bigger than them or their editors. The most powerful lobbies on the planet, and the weight of the US government is still sitting on the free press like an 800 pound gorilla.” Given the level of censorship the film has been subject to, Furst firmly believes that a massive free speech platform such X would be ideal to get the word out – if even for a couple of days.

“I feel like Elon could change this conversation overnight, the country is divided only due to the success of propaganda on the left. No democrat can sit thru this movie and see Fauci or the pandemic the same way again. That’s why MSM doesn’t want to acknowledge this,” Furst told ZeroHedge. The documentary features notable figures at the heart of the pandemic response, including Dr. Robert Redfield – the former director of the CDC during the outbreak – who was completely shut out of Anthony Fauci’s inner circle while the NIAID boss and top virologists conspired via secret back channels to shape the narrative around COVID origins. Also featured are former State Department COVID investigator David Asher, and Richard Ebright – a Rutgers molecular biologist who’s spent years pushing back against the Fauci wagon-circling by the scientific community.

"Tony believed that the best way to prepare for the next pandemic, was to create it." – Dr. Robert Redfield, Virologist and Former Head of the CDC.#ThankYouDrFauci is now streaming at https://t.co/WOIVYpts5Q.#FauciKnew #FauciLiedMillionsDied #WatchNow #Covid19 #documentary pic.twitter.com/ZwCWdhZir9

— Thank You Dr Fauci (@ThankYouDrFauci) November 3, 2024

Nicole Shanahan: “Pharmaceutical companies and their investors have had emergency meetings” since Trump named RFK Jr. to be HHS Secretary

“The increase in their stock price over the last 10 years has been directly tied to many injuries that have been swept under the rug.”… pic.twitter.com/VGbd3CLKPK

— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) November 24, 2024

Frens

You're my friend now.. pic.twitter.com/3MJrCN7vXs

— B&S (@_B___S) November 23, 2024

Ducks

This is how farmers control pests in rice fields using ducks! pic.twitter.com/mkRd7RVQyh

— Jean Claude NIYOMUGABO (@jcniyomugabo) November 24, 2024

Horse

Anytime I sees horse running free tells me heaven is real. ✨ pic.twitter.com/l3j1G0um6u

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 23, 2024

Street art

Incredible street art

Wait for it
pic.twitter.com/kbaUwqgngg

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) November 24, 2024

Donkey

Bros rescuing a stranded donkey. This just made my day!! pic.twitter.com/goFuKikUJg

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 24, 2024

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Debt Rattle June 11 2024

Jun 112024

June 11, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:10 am Finance Tagged with: Apple, Azov Brigade, creepy spyware, Democrat lawfare, electric war, goldmine, Lindsey Graham, OpenAI 46 Responses »

Utagawa Hiroshige Sudden Evening Shower on the Great Bridge near Atake 1857

• Ukraine Is A ‘Gold Mine’ – Lindsey Graham (RT)

• Zelensky Not The One Running Ukraine – Times (RT)

• Russian General Staff Aims At Ending The Ukraine By Electric War (Helmer)

• Russia Ready To Strike NATO Airfields Hosting Ukrainian Jets – MP (RT)

• US Lifts Arms Ban On Notorious Azov Brigade (RT)

• The Three Key Messages From St. Petersburg to the Global Majority (Pepe Escobar)

• Can Democracy Survive the “Defenders of Democracy”? (Turley)

• Defense Rests In Hunter Biden Gun Case Without Defendant Testifying (JTN)

• Democrat Lawfare Has Failed To Derail Trump Campaign So Far (JTN)

• It’s Trump vs WWIII – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

• Elon Says Will Ban Apple’s Creepy Spyware Devices If They Integrate OpenAI (ZH)

• 1000s of Californians Lose Jobs Thanks To Newsom’s $20/hr Minimum Wage (RT)

• If Wishes Were Fishes – a Teachable Intermezzo (Kunstler)

Trump 51

JUST IN: Donald Trump suggests prosecution is coming for the 51 intelligence "experts" who lied about the Hunter Biden story.

The comment came while Trump blasted Biden for defaming him with the "suckers and losers" hoax.

Trump compared the hoax to the Russian collusion hoax,… pic.twitter.com/J4VlQy2K88

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 9, 2024

Trump jail

This Influencer Is Related To BlackRock CEO Larry Fink

He says Donald Trump will be put in jail ahead of the 2024 Election

“So you guys just need to accept the fact that Donald Trump is going to go to jail. The Democrats are in absolute desperation mode, and they have to do… pic.twitter.com/xIW9zGx4gS

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) June 9, 2024

Trump tips

BREAKING: Trump's plan to eliminate taxes on tips for restaurant and hospitality workers will influence over 12 MILLION Americans, the majority of which are in larger cities

I predict a few more million voters are switching to Trump because of this one statement

GENIUS pic.twitter.com/YJlDwmZqFr

— George (@BehizyTweets) June 9, 2024

Michael Cohen

NEW: TikTok influencer Michael Cohen says people will be thrown out of windows and end up in gulags if Trump is elected president.

lol.

“It is all about him… and just like Putin, once you start to get too big for your own britches, people will start flying out of windows.”… pic.twitter.com/uhYov5z7iq

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 10, 2024

Bannon Epstein

In 2019, Steve Bannon taped more than 15 hours of interviews with Jeffrey Epstein.

Bannon was accused of giving Epstein media training for an upcoming 60 Minutes interview that never occurred. However, Bannon said he was not media-training the pedophile but instead making “a… pic.twitter.com/SJevvukSjg

— LIZ CROKIN (@LizCrokin) June 9, 2024

“..They could be the richest country in all of Europe… If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of..”

• Ukraine Is A ‘Gold Mine’ – Lindsey Graham (RT)

Washington “cannot afford” to allow Russia to achieve victory in the Ukraine conflict as this would mean losing direct access to vast mineral assets, US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has said. In an interview with ‘Face the Nation’ on CBS on Sunday, Graham accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a “megalomaniac” who is attempting to “re-create the Russian Empire by force of arms,” starting with Ukraine. He further claimed that if Moscow wins the current conflict, it will then take over Ukraine’s wealth and share it with China. Graham described that prospect as “ridiculous,” suggesting it would be better if this “gold mine” were available to the US instead. “They’re sitting on 10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine.

Lindsey Graham
https://twitter.com/i/status/1799887947363393859

They could be the richest country in all of Europe… If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of, that $10 to $12 trillion of critical mineral assets could be used by Ukraine and the West, not given to Putin and China,” Graham stated. This is a very big deal how Ukraine ends. Let’s help them win a war we can’t afford to lose… They’re sitting on a gold mine. To give Putin $10 or $12 trillion for critical minerals that he will share with China is ridiculous. Graham, a longtime Russia hawk and one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine in the US Senate, also called on the West to speed up the seizure of $300 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets. He reiterated his demands for Russia to be designated “a state sponsor of terrorism” under US law, a suggestion which earlier this year landed the senator on Moscow’s list of extremists and terrorists.

One day prior to Graham’s remarks, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban argued that the West wants Kiev to win the conflict with Russia so that it can control Ukraine’s wealth. In an interview with Hir TV, Orban accused the US and its allies of seeing Ukraine as a potentially huge source of revenue which they will be able to control, provided Russia is defeated. He also said the conflict is a major boost for Western “arms suppliers, creditors, and speculators,” arguing that this is the reason it has dragged on for so long. Moscow has repeatedly stated throughout the conflict that its goals are to protect the largely Russian-speaking population of Donbass against persecution by Kiev, and to ensure Russia’s own security in light of NATO expansion toward its borders. Moscow has never spoken of any intention to take over Ukraine’s resources, but has repeatedly stressed that the former Ukrainian regions which have chosen to join Russia, including Crimea, must remain under its control.

“..Yermak is a former film producer whom Zelensky – an actor turned politician – brought into the government in 2019. He has recently begun moving into the spotlight..”

• Zelensky Not The One Running Ukraine – Times (RT)

Multiple Ukrainian officials have complained to The Times about the growing power of Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff Andrey Yermak, who they say de facto runs Ukraine. The 52-year-old has previously been described as “Zelensky’s right-hand man” and “Ukraine’s real power broker.” Officials in Kiev who spoke to the British outlet now say he has become something more. “Yermak’s authority has surpassed that of all of Ukraine’s elected officials bar the president,” The Times’ Maxim Tucker wrote in the article published on Friday. “Some sources went so far as to describe him as the ‘de facto head of state’ or ‘Ukraine’s vice-president’ in a series of interviews.” Tucker claimed to have spoken with “senior government, military, law enforcement and diplomatic sources,” many of whom requested anonymity. He described Yermak as Zelensky’s “greatest flaw,” and his behavior as “thirst for power.”

“Concern is mounting that Zelensky is increasingly reliant on a handful of sycophantic domestic voices,” Tucker noted, as the number of people with direct access to him shrinks while Yermak’s team expands. Zelensky’s “big mistake has been to entrust so much authority to Yermak, who is clearly intoxicated with power,” said Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center. Military officials have also blamed Yermak for arranging the firing of General Valery Zaluzhny in February, because he saw him as a rival. A spokesman for the Zelensky’s office denied this, saying Zaluzhny was not fired but promoted to ambassador to the UK, “which signifies a high level of trust.” A spokesperson for the presidential office, which Yermak runs, dismissed all criticism of the chief of staff as “propaganda attacks.”

Yermak has a “direct but efficient management style,” they said, which has delivered successes such as the Swiss “peace summit” next week. Zelensky “is the one who makes all the key decisions,” the spokesperson insisted. Yermak is a former film producer whom Zelensky – an actor turned politician – brought into the government in 2019. He has recently begun moving into the spotlight, attending the ‘Democracy Summit’ in Denmark alongside former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, himself a paid adviser to the Ukrainian government. It was Yermak and Rasmussen’s ‘International Working Group on Security Issues and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine’ that first proposed lifting all the restrictions on the use of Western weapons supplied to Kiev, which was quickly amplified by former British PM Boris Johnson. The talking point then spread to NATO capitals until the White House eventually agreed to it.

“DTEK has lost some 86 percent of its generating capacity..”

• Russian General Staff Aims At Ending The Ukraine By Electric War (Helmer)

As the Ukraine’s peak summer electricity season approaches, the list of the Russian General Staff’s Electric War targets is shrinking. This is because almost all the Ukrainian electricity generating plants have been stopped. What remains for destruction are the connecting lines and distribution grids for the Ukraine’s imported electricity from Poland and other European Union neighbours. The microwave and cell telephone towers, and the diesel fuel stocks which are powering the back-up generating sets are next. “There’s no keeping the Ukrainian cell network up any more than there is keeping up the electrical grid,” comments a close military observer. “The General Staff have set the flow of Ukrainian refugees west as inversely proportional to the flow of data and electrons over Ukrainian airwaves and transmission lines. We can expect that relationship to be set to highly inverse before the summer is out. What calculations have been made regarding things further west are just beginning to become evident.”

The Electric War is now accelerating faster to the Polish border than the Russian army advance along the line east of the Dnieper River. In the very long history of siege warfare, there has never been a case of letting the enemy’s civilian population run safely away from his castles and cities until the fortifications and army which remain must choose between surrender and destruction. The geographic spread, the explosive yield, and the cost of each of the raids are accelerating. On June 1, the Russian military bloggers, which continue to be the semi-official source of battlefield news each day, reported that energy facilities had been attacked in five regions of the Ukraine – in the east in Zaporozhye and Dniepropetrovsk; in the west in Kirovograd and Ivano-Frankovsk regions. Two thermal power plants were seriously damaged, following a salvo which the Ukrainians counted at 53 missiles and 47 drones.

The next day, June 2, the Russian sources, quoting Ukrainian electricity company bulletins to consumers, reported emergency blackouts and restricted power supply schedules were in effect in Kiev and its surrounding region. On June 5, the situation in Kiev was worse, according to DTEK, the dominant privately owned utility, and Ukrenergo, the state operator of the country’s high-voltage transmission lines. On June 6-7, The Washington Post – editorial motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” – reported Ukrainian utility managers and state officials as confirming that at least 86% of the country’s electricity generating capacity has now been destroyed. “We are catastrophically short of electricity for our needs,” the newspaper quoted Sergei Kovalenko, chief executive of the Ukrainian private electricity distributor YASNO, ….The power cuts have divided Kiev into the haves and the have-nots — with even residents at some privileged, high-end addresses suddenly finding themselves in the latter category.”

“DTEK has lost some 86 percent of its generating capacity, [DTEK chief executive Maxim] Timchenko said. What makes the situation worse is that many of the electrical facilities have been targeted repeatedly — a cycle of destruction, recovery, destruction, he said.” “Next week will be better,” Ukrenergo spokesperson Mariia Tsaturian said. “The week after that could be worse.” “The scheduled outages will continue — the only question is how severe they will be, Ukrenergo CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskyi said.” “We are talking about a huge loss of generation,” said Yury Kubrushko, founder of Imepower, a Ukrainian energy consultancy. “I can hardly see from where Ukraine can get new extra capacity just this winter.” On June 7, a video recorded stroll down one of Odessa’s shopping streets revealed an emergency generating set providing electricity for almost all of the commercial establishments.

“This is in no way sustainable,” comments a NATO military engineer. “Note how each shop has its own genset. The generators in the video are not designed for the duty cycle they’re being run at. They’ll wear out soon enough. The military, including deployed NATO personnel, use the shops and the gensets, too. The idea of pooling their resources, sharing load among gensets, thus reducing wear and tear on the whole network, while collectivizing fuel and maintenance costs, doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. To be sure, what follows will be no lack of electrocutions, carbon monoxide poisonings, and fires. We can bet the manifestations of the social pathology we’re seeing here have been factored in by the General Staff. Their attack point will now be to stop fuel, engine oil, spares, and replacements from getting through. ”

Independently of one another, Russian and Ukrainian reporters are confirming the impact of the power losses on the operation of water and sewerage systems in the majority of Ukrainian cities. According to Oleg Popenko, a Ukrainian expert on energy for communal services, “Armageddon has already arrived. We just don’t feel it yet. But the residents of Poltava, for example, feel it, because since May 5 of this year, 120,000 residents of the city receive water by the hour and use sewerage by the hour. You can imagine what happened in Zhitomir when the central sewerage collector didn’t work there for a week, but now in Poltava [it’s been] a month. And this is the problem with water utilities in 70% of Ukrainian cities. Water utilities are probably more important than rest of the infrastructure in the city. Heat and electricity can be replaced somehow, and you can go somewhere. But if the sewer system breaks down in a city, the city is no longer viable in principle.”

“..Moscow would perceive the deliveries of F-16 fighters to Ukraine as a nuclear threat..”

• Russia Ready To Strike NATO Airfields Hosting Ukrainian Jets – MP (RT)

F-16 fighter jets and any airfields they are based at will be legitimate targets for the Russian military if they participate in combat missions against Moscow’s forces, the chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, has warned. The comments come as Kiev prepares to receive the first delivery of US-made fighter jets from its Western backers, after Ukrainian pilots were trained to fly them. In a statement to RIA Novosti published on Monday, Kartapolov clarified that if the F-16s “are not used for their intended purpose” or are simply held in storage at foreign airbases with the intent to transfer them to Ukraine, where they will be equipped, maintained, and flown from Ukrainian airfields, then Russia would have no claims against its “former partners” and would not target them.

However, if the jets take off from foreign bases and carry out sorties and strikes against Russian forces, both the fighter planes and the airfields they are stationed at will be “legitimate targets,” according to Kartapolov. “As for [our ability] to shoot [them] down, we can shoot down anyone, anywhere,” the MP insisted. Kartapolov’s statement comes after the chief of aviation of Ukraine’s Air Force Command, Sergey Golubtsov, stated in an interview with Radio Liberty on Sunday that some of the F-16 fighter jets donated to Kiev by the West would be stationed at foreign airbases. He explained that only a portion of the jets would be stationed directly on Ukrainian territory, corresponding to the number of pilots trained to operate the aircraft. The other jets would be kept in reserve at “safe airbases” abroad so that they are not targeted by the Russian military.

Golubtsov stated that so far four countries have agreed to transfer F-16s to Ukraine, namely Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. While he did not specify exactly how many aircraft would be donated, he claimed it was between 30 and 40 planes, with potentially more to come in the future. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also warned that Moscow would perceive the deliveries of F-16 fighters to Ukraine as a nuclear threat, given that the jets have long been used as part of the US-led bloc’s joint nuclear missions. At the same time, the minister stressed that the US-designed jets would not change the situation on the battlefield, and would be shot down and destroyed like any other foreign weapons supplied to Ukraine.

Poking the bear.

• US Lifts Arms Ban On Notorious Azov Brigade (RT)

The State Department has allowed the delivery of US weapons to Ukraine’s Azov Brigade, whose members openly espouse ultranationalist and neo-Nazi views. The flow of arms had previously been restricted due to the unit’s ties to hateful ideology. “After thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the US Department of State,” the agency said in a statement to the Washington Post on Monday, referring to the legislation that bans military aid to units that were implicated in human rights violations. The State Department added that it found “no evidence” of such violations committed by Azov. Azov was founded as a volunteer battalion in 2014 and participated in the war with the breakaway republics of Donbass after they chose to secede from Ukraine in the wake of the Western-backed coup in Kiev. The unit’s core fighters were active and former members of ultranationalist and neo-Nazi groups, as well as far-right football hooligans.

The unit’s primary co-founder Andrey Biletsky was a member of a white supremacist organization in the 2000s. He has since toned down his rhetoric and denied ties to neo-Nazism. Nevertheless, many Azov fighters continue to sport Nazi tattoos and memorabilia associated with the Third Reich. The brigade continues to use banners with the Wolfsangel symbol, which was used by several German divisions during World War II, including the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich. The unit was incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard in 2015 and has significantly grown in size over the years. In 2018, Congress banned the delivery of arms to the Azov Brigade, citing its ties to neo-Nazi ideology. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, said at the time that “white supremacy and neo-Nazism are unacceptable and have no place in our world.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which combats anti-Semitism and monitors hate groups, described the unit in 2019 as a “Ukrainian extremist group” with ties to US-based neo-Nazi organization Atomwaffen and similar white supremacist movements in Europe. The ADL has since changed its view, however, writing in an email to The Grayzone news outlet in late 2022 that it no longer considered Azov as the “far-right group it once was.” Many Azov fighters surrendered to Russian troops during the siege of the city of Mariupol in 2022. Moscow has accused the members of the unit of war crimes, including torture and execution of civilians.

“The Unit, [..] an apolitical, transactional form of cross-border payments, anchored in gold (40%) and BRICS+ currencies (60%)..”

• The Three Key Messages From St. Petersburg to the Global Majority (Pepe Escobar)

In the year of the Russian presidency of BRICS, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) had to deliver something special. And deliver it did: over 21,000 people representing no less than 139 nations – a true microcosm of the Global Majority, discussing every facet of the drive towards a multipolar, multinodal (italics mine), polycentric world. St. Petersburg, beyond all the networking and the frantic deal-making – $78 billion-worth clinched in only three days – crafted three intertwined key messages already resonating all across the Global Majority.

Message Number One: President Putin, a “European Russian” and true son of this dazzling, dynamic historic marvel by the Neva, delivered an extremely detailed one-hour speech on the Russian economy at the forum’s plenary session. The key takeaway: as the collective West launched total economic war against Russia, the civilization-state turned it around and positioned itself as the world’s 4th largest economy by purchasing power parity (PPP). Putin showed how Russia still carries the potential to launch no less than nine sweeping – global – structural changes, an all-out drive involving the federal, regional, and municipal spheres. Everything is in play – from global trade and the labor market to digital platforms, modern technologies, strengthening small and medium-sized businesses and exploring the still untapped, phenomenal potential of Russia’s regions.

What was made perfectly clear is how Russia managed to reposition itself beyond sidestepping the – illegitimate – sanctions tsunami to establishing a solid, diversified system oriented towards global trade – and completely linked to the expansion of BRICS. Russia-friendly states already account for three-quarters of Moscow’s trade turnover. Putin’s emphasis on the Global Majority’s accelerated drive to strengthen sovereignty was directly linked to the collective West doing its best – rather, worst – to undermine trust in their own payment infrastructure. And that leads us to… Glazyev and Dilma rock the boat.

Message Number Two: That was arguably the major breakthrough in St. Petersburg. Putin stated how the BRICS are working on their own payment infrastructure, independent from pressure/sanctions by the collective West. Putin had a special meeting with Dilma Rousseff, president of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB). They did talk in detail about the bank’s development – and most of all, as later confirmed by Rousseff, about The Unit, whose lineaments were first revealed exclusively by Sputnik: an apolitical, transactional form of cross-border payments, anchored in gold (40%) and BRICS+ currencies (60%). The day after meeting Putin, president Dilma had an even more crucial meeting at 10 am in a private room at SPIEF with Sergey Glazyev, the Minister for Macro-Economy at the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Glazyev, who had previously provided full academic backing to the Unit concept, explained all the details to President Dilma. They were both extremely pleased with the meeting. A beaming Rousseff revealed that she had already discussed The Unit with Putin. It was agreed there will be a special conference at the NDB in Shanghai on The Unit in September. This means the new payment system has every chance to be at the table during the BRICS summit in October in Kazan, and be adopted by the current BRICS 10 and the near future, expanded BRICS+.

Message Number Three: It had to be, of course, about BRICS – which everyone, Putin included, stressed will be significantly expanded. The quality of the BRICS-related sessions in St. Petersburg demonstrated how the Global Majority is now facing a unique historical juncture – with a real possibility for the first time in the last 250 years to go all-out for a structural change of the world-system. And it’s not only about BRICS. It was confirmed in St. Petersburg that no less than 59 nations – and counting – plan to join not only BRICS but also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). No wonder: these multilateral organizations now finally have established themselves on the forefront of the drive towards the multimodal (italics mine) – and to quote Putin in his address – “harmonic multipolar world”.

“..the line that sends many of us into a fetal position: “I’m a Democrat and I am here to save democracy.”

• Can Democracy Survive the “Defenders of Democracy”? (Turley)

In 2024, the greatest test for our Constitution may be whether it can survive the “Defenders of Democracy.” Ronald Reagan often said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Today, Reagan’s line cannot compare with the line that sends many of us into a fetal position: “I’m a Democrat and I am here to save democracy.” The jump scare claim is that unless citizens vote for democrats, the end of democracy will begin shortly. In 2022, House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told “Fox News Sunday” that “democracy will be ending” if Democrats lost the midterms. The rhetoric has continued to ramp up with the upcoming election. From President Joe Biden to a host of progressive politicians and pundits, the 2024 election is all about saving democracy. The public has been told that if the Democrats lose power, citizens will be living in a tyrannical hellscape.

Vice President Kamala Harris stated in one interview that 2024 “genuinely could be” the last democratic election in America’s history. Dozens of Democrats have said that democracy will end if Biden is not reelected. The Washington Post even ran an op-ed titled, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” Many Americans have tuned out the overheated rhetoric, as shown by Donald Trump’s continuing lead in many polls even after his conviction in Manhattan. The warnings also ignore that our system has checks and balances that protected democracy for centuries as the world’s oldest and most successful constitutional system. These dire predictions would require all three branches to fail in an unprecedented fashion. While these figures cite the Capitol riot on Jan 6., 2021 as evidence of the pending collapse of democracy, the system worked as designed on that day. Congress refused to be deterred by the riot and virtually every court (including many presided over by Trump-appointed judges) rejected challenges to the election.

The most obvious threats today to the democratic system are coming from the left, not the right. Democratic secretaries of state sought to block Trump from the ballot in 2024, and Democratic members sought to bar roughly 120 colleagues from their respective ballots. It seemed that the greatest threat to democracy was its exercise by voters. Fortunately, a unanimous Supreme Court rejected the theory and added, “Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos.” There has also been a push by Democrats to keep third-party candidates off ballots. Again, the last thing democracy needs is for voters to have more democratic choice. In New York, Democratic congressional candidate Paula Collins even suggested that, after the election, the focus must be on “re-education” of MAGA voters, although she acknowledged that “that sounds like a rather, a re-education camp. I don’t think we really want to call it that. I’m sure we can find another way to phrase it.”

Democratic operatives are using the same rationalization to call for biased reporting to help Biden get reelected. Democratic strategist James Carville this week demanded more “slanted” media coverage against Donald Trump to save democracy. Carville was triggered by New York Times editor Joe Kahn suggesting that the newspaper report the news in a fair and neutral manner. The suggestion sent many pundits into vapors at the very thought of reembracing objectivity in journalism. “I don’t have anything against slanted coverage,” Carville insisted. “I really don’t, I would have something against it at most other times in American history, but not right now. F— your objectivity. The real objectivity in this country right now is we’re either going to have a Constitution or we’re not.”

There has also been a push by Democrats to keep third-party candidates off ballots. Again, the last thing democracy needs is for voters to have more democratic choice. In New York, Democratic congressional candidate Paula Collins even suggested that, after the election, the focus must be on “re-education” of MAGA voters, although she acknowledged that “that sounds like a rather, a re-education camp. I don’t think we really want to call it that. I’m sure we can find another way to phrase it.” Democratic operatives are using the same rationalization to call for biased reporting to help Biden get reelected. Democratic strategist James Carville this week demanded more “slanted” media coverage against Donald Trump to save democracy. Carville was triggered by New York Times editor Joe Kahn suggesting that the newspaper report the news in a fair and neutral manner. The suggestion sent many pundits into vapors at the very thought of reembracing objectivity in journalism.

“I don’t have anything against slanted coverage,” Carville insisted. “I really don’t, I would have something against it at most other times in American history, but not right now. F— your objectivity. The real objectivity in this country right now is we’re either going to have a Constitution or we’re not.” It was particularly galling to hear the call for “slanted coverage” in the same week that the Hunter Biden laptop was authenticated and used as evidence in his Delaware trial. The government has called the widely reported claim that the laptop was “Russian disinformation” a debunked “conspiracy theory.” Carville was making his pitch for more biased reporting to the very media that buried the laptop story before the last election and spent two years in denial of its authenticity. Yet, many journalists agree with Carville. Some journalism schools have been teaching that reporters need to dump concepts of objectivity and neutrality to achieve political and social reforms.

This week, reporters were irate after Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis issued a blunt message that the newspaper could not survive after losing half of its readership and tens of millions of dollars last year. He told the staff: “People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” The fear that these newspapers might cover Biden and Trump in a fair and balanced way was immediately denounced as . . . wait for it . . . a threat to democracy. After Carville’s meltdown, the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan warned Kahn and others that “our very democracy is on the brink, and how the Times covers that existential threat is of extraordinary importance.” She then asked whether the paper will “forthrightly identify the problems posed by a radicalized Republican Party that is increasingly dedicated to lies, bad-faith attacks and the destruction of democratic norms.” Sullivan expressed alarm that the media would “try to cut the situation straight down the middle as if we were still in the old days — an era that no longer exists?”

Let’s see them acquit him..

• Defense Rests In Hunter Biden Gun Case Without Defendant Testifying (JTN)

Hunter Biden’s defense rested their case in his Delaware gun trial Monday without calling the first son to testify. The gun trial is now in its sixth day, with closing arguments starting after lunch. The trial resumed after a week of witness testimony from ex-girlfriends, an ex-wife and other Biden family members. The unprecedented trial of of the child of a sitting American president is expected to enter its final stages with closing arguments beginning shortly. The prosecution rested its case last week and the defense spent the weekend contemplating whether or not to call Biden to the stand to testify in his own defense. “We are down to that last decision,” Lowell told the judge last week. Hunter Biden was charged in Delaware by Justice Department special counsel David Weiss with three felony crimes in connection to 2018 firearm purchase while he was using drugs.

The accusations include lying to the licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application used to screen firearm’s buyers by declaring he was not a drug user, and illegally possessing the firearm for 11 days. Several witnesses told the jury they witnessed Hunter Biden’s crack cocaine addiction first hand at the time when he purchased the firearm at a Wilmington gun shop. President Joe Biden said last week that he would not consider a pardon for his son and said he would accept the outcome of the trial. Hunter Biden is set to face other charges in California before the 2024 election on federal tax charges after he failed to pay $1.4 million in taxes over four years. His debt has since been settled, the Associated Press reported. That trial is set to begin in September after the judge recently granted a delay.

“..more campaign funds were given to this campaign than any campaign they think in history, almost $400 million..”

• Democrat Lawfare Has Failed To Derail Trump Campaign So Far (JTN)

Four indictments and one set of convictions later, a Democrat-led lawfare strategy has failed so far to derail Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House, but it has triggered an avalanche of financial support as the former president hold leads in most battleground states that will decide the 2024 election. No where was Trump’s resilience more obvious than his travels across the West Coast this weekend, where he collected $12 million at a Silicon Valley fund-raiser at the home of a Big Tech executive who used to support Hillary Clinton, scored millions more at events in blue southern California and then jetted off to Las Vegas for a boisterous rally in Nevada where a post-conviction poll showed him leading that once-Biden-friendly state by five points. Experts say the narrative and imagery last month of a Democrat prosecutor in Manhattan securing a conviction against the opposition party leader just six months before Election Day galvanized support for Trump among the GOP base while motivating complacent independents and Never Trumpers to choose sides.

This created a painful boomerang for Democrats who hoped the May 31 conviction would sink the 45th president’s election efforts. “People are motivated,” former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin told Just the News. “They woke up the next day wanting to do something about it, realizing that they have to fight even harder […] They’ve turned their energy, their emotion into activity into wanting to make a difference. If someone goes out to the WinRed platform and donates $5, they might be willing to donate 25 more dollars. They may be willing to sign up to volunteer today, if you ask.” “There are people who were on the sidelines altogether on President Trump,” he added. “I know of one person just a few weeks before the verdict came out. I called him up I tried to talk him into supporting President Trump. He had supported another candidate. He wasn’t yet ready. Right after the verdict came out, he wired in $800,000 to President Trump’s joint fundraising committee. I just learned that his mother matched him for another $800,000. This these are two people were actually on the sidelines before the verdict.”

The data confirms Zeldin’s anecdotes. Trump campaign officials said the candidate raised more than $50 million in the first 36 hours after the verdict, much of it from first-time donors. Trump and the Republican National Committee reported their best fundraising month ever in May, with a $141 million haul. Officials said June could be on track for closer to $200 million, positioning Trump to be cash flush for a fall run after months of trailing Biden in the fundraising contest. The former president has embraced the surge, repeatedly portraying himself as a persecuted political martyr while warning the Democrat strategy is backfiring. “Right after the announcement of this, more campaign funds were given to this campaign than any campaign they think in history, almost $400 million,” Trump boasted at a Turning Point Action event last week.

“This is why they need war. This is why Europe is going into war. . . . If you cannot sell the new debt, you have to default. If you have war, and that is what is really behind this, if you go into war, they get to default and blame Putin..”

• It’s Trump vs WWIII – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong says we are going to have a wild close to 2024. Let’s start with Biden’s new job approval rating from Martin Armstrong’s “Socrates” program, which is now only 6% to 7%. Armstrong explains, “It’s the old story of draining the swamp, but now, the swamp is an ocean. This is completely crazy. The cases against Trump show you how desperate they are here. The reason they want Biden, and they even blocked RFK Jr. from getting on the Democrat ticket, the reason they want him is he is just a sock puppet. He’s not really in charge. He’s not making any decisions.”

Are the Deep State globalist Democrats panicking over the 6% to 7% Biden approval rating? Top people on both sides know this is an accurate number. With about four months to go before the 2024 Election, are they now panicking over these dismal approval numbers? Armstrong says, “Oh, yes, they are panicking. I have been in politics for more than 40 years. I know how it works. All of a sudden, you see in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, oh, Biden is slipping behind closed doors. That would not make the press unless they wanted it to. They are floating a ballon to see how it goes. All of a sudden, they want Biden to do a debate. Before, no debates. Why? Because they know he’s going to look bad. . . . At the Democrat Convention, they will draft someone else, and that is most likely going to be Hillary.”

The economy and war are linked in a big way, according to Armstrong, and he explains, “You’ve got about $10 trillion of US debt that is maturing this year. . . . You’ve got Secretary of State Blinken threatening China with war. China dumped $53 billion in US debt in the first quarter of 2024. That means China are sellers and not buyers. You had Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen flying to China asking, ‘Please don’t sell.’ It didn’t work. This is why they are talking about raising the capital gains to 44%. Why? If nobody is going to buy the debt, that’s when default comes. If you cannot sell the new debt to pay off the old debt, guess what? It’s done. This is how governments fall, and I have been warning them for decades that this is how it’s going to end. . . . This is why they need war. This is why Europe is going into war. . . . If you cannot sell the new debt, you have to default. If you have war, and that is what is really behind this, if you go into war, they get to default and blame Putin. . . . In November, it’s going to be Trump vs World War III regardless who is on the other side. If you get Hillary or you get Biden, it’s the same thing. Hillary is a neocon, and Biden says yes to whatever the neocons want.” And the neocons clearly want war–a big one.

“Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.”

• Elon Says Will Ban Apple’s Creepy Spyware Devices If They Integrate OpenAI (ZH)

In the end, Apple’s 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference proved to be a flop, with the stock sliding 1.9%, its worst WWDC performance since 2010 and the 4th worst in the iPhone era. It wasn’t supposed to be like this: Apple was supposed to make the grand introduction of (Open AI’s ChatGPT) artificial intelligence features and pretend they are the company’s, leading to the long-overdue surge in AAPL stock which has painfully underperformed most pure AI names. However, once the market realized that Apple [can’t] even in house its own AI module, that’s when the wheels fell off (the “introduction” of a calculator for the iPad did not help Apple’s trailblazing image). But the slump in AAPL stock was just the start of its woes.

Shortly after the close, in response to OpenAI founder Andrej Karpathy’s observation that the laughably named “Apple Intelligence” as it will be called (and which Elon Musk said it is “neither Apple nor intelligent”) will be a persistent layer on top of the entire Apple operating system, Elon Musk made the casual observation that Apple’s approach means that “we can never turn it off”, in other words it is an always on spying system feeding the OpenAI LLM (and who knows what and who else) with constant data.

That’s when the fireworks started. Realizing that his sworn enemy Sam Altman (whose “non-profit” ChatGPT only exists thanks to funding from Musk in the first place) is using his chatbot to supplant Amazon as the most ubiquitous spyware system in the world by having it installed across the entire Apple ecosystem, Musk first responded to an X user that he might have to launch his own phone “if Apple actually integrates woke nanny AI spyware into their OS”… … before directly telling Tim Cook that “he doesn’t want” the latest Apple product, and adding that “either stop this creepy spyware or all Apple devices will be banned from the premises of my companies.”

And just to underscore that point, the Tesla CEO said that “If Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That is an unacceptable security violation” and “visitors will have to check their Apple devices at the door, where they will be stored in a Faraday cage.” Musk saved the piece de resistance for last, slamming Apple as a dumb company which can’t even come up with its own AI, and even dumber for promising it is “somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your privacy” even as it is “handing your data over to a third-party AI that they don’t understand and can’t themselves create is *not* protecting privacy at all!”

The punchline: “Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.” While we assume that much of Elon’s outrage is genuine (mixed in with just a smidge of personal self-interest to have Grok handle the world’s AI requests), this particular eruption by the world’s richest man (or 2nd, or 3rd, or wherever he is now) is a good example of the coming AI wars where competing AI vendors will do everything in their power to have their LLM be the sofrware of choice for the entire world due to its ubiquitous data gather and analysis which will make China’s “always on” spying nanny state seem like amateur hour by comparison.

“You can only raise prices so much..” [..] “..people are not going to pay $20 for a Big Mac. It’s not going to happen.”

• 1000s of Californians Lose Jobs Thanks To Newsom’s $20/hr Minimum Wage (RT)

Californian fast-food restaurants have had to slash some 10,000 jobs in recent months due to the state’s new minimum wage hike, according to a recent report by the California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA) trade group. The report comes after California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill dubbed AB 1228 in September of last year, raising the state’s minimum wage from $16 to $20 an hour. The law came into effect in April and many companies have since been forced to close down, raise prices, or lay off employees. CABIA president Tom Manzo has told Fox News that Californian businesses had already been “under total attack and total assault for years,” and claimed that the state’s lawmakers were living in a “fantasy land” if they thought that drastically raising wages would help workers and businesses.

“You can only raise prices so much,” Manzo said, insisting that “people are not going to pay $20 for a Big Mac. It’s not going to happen.” He also stated that jobs in the fast-food industry were never meant to be long-term or high-paying, calling it a “starter industry” in which people start out working as kids to gain a good work ethic for the rest of their careers. Last week, CABIA ran a full-page ad in the California edition of USA Today, featuring mock “obituaries” of restaurants that have been harmed by the new minimum wage law. These include popular chains such as Pizza Hut, Subway, Burger King, McDonald’s and Cinnabon. According to the trade group, one taco chain, Rubio’s, has had to close as many as 48 outlets in the state due to the “rising cost of doing business,” including 24 stores in the Los Angeles area, 13 in San Diego, and 11 in Northern California.

Meanwhile, the owner of 140 Burger King franchises in the state has announced he will slash workers’ hours and expedite the rollout of self-service kiosks to offset the impact of the new minimum wage law. Similar measures will be taken by a McDonald’s franchisee, who said he will hike menu prices and delay renovations at his 18 restaurants. As restaurants across the US have also been forced to gradually raise their prices due to rampant inflation, a survey conducted by LendingTree last month has also found that nearly 80% of consumers now consider fast food to be a “luxury” purchase due to how expensive it has become.

Bad management as a feature not a flaw.

• If Wishes Were Fishes – a Teachable Intermezzo (Kunstler)

Forgive me for reiterating a basic principle driving this moment in history: everything organized at the gigantic scale is steaming toward failure: big governments, giant companies, the huge capital investment firms, global shipping, energy production, chain retailing, mass motoring, big electricity, big medicine, big education, big anything. They are all fixing to fail while our politicians and economists make plans based on consolidating them into one super-gigantic mega-system that will run flawlessly on computer tech magic. The failures of each giant system will only amplify and ramify the failures in all the other systems. Take that as axiomatic. For instance, the fantastic failures in higher education now on display, largely due to the Marxian defeat of excellence, will implant a generation of incompetents in all hierarchies of management.

That will result in an insidious matrix of bad decision-making. The Pareto 80-20 principle will ensure that 80-percent of all institutional energy will focus on propping up failing institutions with bad decisions that add up to broken business models (while 20-percent goes into actually carrying-out the bad decisions as policy). That explains how Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation spent $7.5-billion to build seven electric car charging stations. Similarly, if you have an urgent medical problem, the 80-percent of administrative clerks in your primary care doctor’s overgrown practice (with an assist from the health insurance company cohorts they must coordinate with) will actually manage to delay your treatment as long as possible, with a fair chance of disallowing it altogether. And if you happen to get treatment, there’s also an excellent chance you will be misdiagnosed and subjected to iatrogenic injury.

The 80-20 principle explains the stupendous mismanagement of the Covid-19 event, especially the “marketing” of mRNA vaccines as miracle remedies that turned out to be the opposite of beneficial. The result of that chain of bad decision-making will ensure that any widespread health crisis arising from the long-term effects of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines will destroy the hospital system. (It is already underway.) You can extrapolate that grandiose failure of competence to the World Health Organization and its efforts to orchestrate a new pandemic crisis. You might have noticed that it is increasingly difficult to get replacement parts for any machine, most particularly cars. That’s a symptom of failure in several integrated systems that are breaking down now: the manufacture of products in distant lands, price disorder in the container-ship business, the collapse of the US trucking system (and with it, the just-in-time inventory model), and the inability of auto dealers to find competent mechanics (while the sinking middle class can no longer afford to buy the cars they sell under the most liberal financing schemes). Expect all that to intensify.

You’ll see similar dysfunction in the system that delivers food to the people of our country. Even as currently operating, with the supermarkets amply stocked, the triumph of poor decision-making has led to 80-percent of the products sold being some form of processed corn syrup and GMO grains marketed as “fun” snack-foods that have destroyed the health of a great many citizens (and overwhelmed the medical system with chronic illness). The breakdown of the US food system is now proceeding with idiotic policy from our government (actually every government in Western Civ is doing it) undermining farm operations, and most especially small farms, with egregious regulation. The pretext for this is the delusional hysteria over “climate change.” It gives the managers something to manage badly.

Elon autonomy

Elon Musk explains in 2019 why Tesla went all in on autonomy as soon as 2014: "If we did not participate in the autonomy revolution, then our cars would not be useful to people relative to cars that are autonomous." pic.twitter.com/grDIlau4Lp

— ELON DOCS (@elon_docs) June 9, 2024

Optimus

Optimus is expected to be priced between $20,000 and $30,000.

一 Elon Musk

pic.twitter.com/JsTdvmNlJh

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) June 9, 2024

Redfield
https://twitter.com/i/status/1799930774793130076

Boop

Predators exist

Hooman: boop pic.twitter.com/ljKMMnrnBF

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 10, 2024

Ripe banana

Your ripe banana is honking. Please keep petting him. pic.twitter.com/DoNO6UH2xz

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 8, 2024

Kids
https://twitter.com/i/status/1799912861885780311

6 minutes

A wonderful 6 minute movie …pic.twitter.com/Mt9E8bhcgY

— Figen (@TheFigen_) June 9, 2024

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Debt Rattle March 20 2024

Mar 202024

March 20, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: Gaza, hunger, iPhone, Lindsey Graham, Macron, SCOTUS, Texas, Viagra 51 Responses »

Edgar Degas Leaving the paddock1866
Stolen from Gardner Museum March 18 1990, the single largest art theft in the world. Never recovered

• ‘Losing a War is No Fun’ (Manley)

• French Army ‘Ready For War’ – Top General (RT)

• France Preparing to Deploy Military Contingent in Ukraine: Russian Intel (Sp.)

• Ukraine’s Losses ‘In The Millions’ – Polish General (RT)

• Lindsey Graham Tells Ukraine To Draft Younger Soldiers (RT)

• US Military-Industrial Complex Jacks Up Prices Amid Ukraine Proxy War (Sp.)

• iPhones Won’t Work In Case Of World War III – Russian MP (RT)

• German Living Standards In ‘Unprecedented post-WW2 Slump’ (RT)

• Medvedev Reacts To Germany’s Putin Snub (RT)

• ‘Catastrophic’ Hunger Has Gripped Gaza (RT)

• Supreme Court Allows Texas To Start Arresting And Deporting Illegal Aliens (ZH)

• Guilty!—But Not Really Guilty? (Victor Davis Hanson)

• It’s Time for GOP To Unite Behind Trump (Marcus)

• How the Democrats Plan To Steal the Election (Lew Rockwell)

• Viagra May Prevent Alzheimer’s (RT)

B.S.

Lensman

This is actually happening!
pic.twitter.com/qeNBu3S1mF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2024

O’Leary

NEW: Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary slams AG Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron seizing Donald Trump's assets 'like in Venezuela or Cuba' during heated CNN shouting match.

"This may be great for the attorney general, but this is not good for America."

"Forget about Trump. You… pic.twitter.com/yzb6YhPKfc

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 19, 2024

Kevin O'Leary goes off on New York AG Letitia James:

"This has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump at this point. This is an attack on America. And I don't know how you can look at it any other way."
pic.twitter.com/Xps5j8k1MJ

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 19, 2024

Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs dropping truth bombs pic.twitter.com/ELvCynw2Mf

— Zlatti71 (@djuric_zlatko) March 19, 2024

Navarro

NEW: Biden's Justice Department shatters historical precedent imprisoning Trump Trade Advisor Peter Navarro for contempt of Congress, destroying a 250-year tradition of honoring executive privilege.

Obama's DOJ didn't prosecute Eric Holder and Lois Lerner following contempt… pic.twitter.com/WTUp0jrBC5

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 19, 2024

AIPAC

Israel owns all American politicians and they made an ad to celebrate it

Do you have a problem? pic.twitter.com/GGa5RxkmnI

— What the media hides. (@narrative_hole) March 18, 2024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1770019795762659476

Greenwald SCOTUS

‼️ @GGreenwald: "It's not often that the US Supreme Court issues a landmark ruling that defines free speech.

And I would argue that the oral argument that the Supreme Court held today is the single most important free speech case, not only in decades, but the single most… pic.twitter.com/XjCykWz83S

— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) March 19, 2024

“..the US will not suffer the consequences anywhere near to the degree the Europeans will.”

• ‘Losing a War is No Fun’ (Manley)

Russia’s economy has survived Western sanctions “far better” than predicted, recent reports show. Meanwhile, the European Union’s (EU) economy has been suffering drastically, causing working class voters to turn against aid for Ukraine. The Greanville Post published an article on Tuesday which claims the European Union has become the site of the 21st century’s “biggest political disaster”. The article writes that Paris, France—which once saw leftist planning agendas filled with “protests, gatherings and strikes”—now seems to be a city where there is little talk of the “economic, political and confidence collapse” of the biggest economic bloc in the world. Daniel Lazare, an independent investigative journalist and author, sat down with Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday and discussed the recent piece. “Well, I think Europe is losing the war,” said Lazare. “And losing a war is no fun. The situation in Ukraine is going very poorly. Russia clearly is winning, its economy is doing very well. The European economy, by contrast, is stalling.

And if Russia does make progress in the war, if the Ukraine government breaks in some way, then the results for Europe will be devastating.” “I mean, this is not a faraway war for [the EU]. It’s a faraway war for America. But it’s a war on the doorstep of the EU. And the prospect of a Ukrainian collapse would cause panic in Poland, but also in Berlin and Paris, and Macron has been making crazy noises about sending troops to Ukraine, which is completely nuts. But then again, the guy is desperate and doesn’t know quite how to respond. And, the same kind of desperation is evident in other capitals as well,” he added. Sputnik’s Garland Nixon noted that European governments have not done a “good job” of trying to convince their public that they have to suffer and sacrifice for the “democracy of the neo-Nazis”.

“The US is also quite confident that, as you said, the ruble will be turned to rubble, the Russian economy would be smashed, that they’d be, you know, they’d be closed out of the energy market and would be crying for mercy very soon,” said Lazare of the West’s attacks on Russia’s economy. “But that didn’t happen. Quite the reverse. Russia was able to find outlets for its oil and gas. It developed markets with China and other nations. The US has wound up shooting itself in the foot. And the amazing thing is that this keeps happening again and again.” Sputnik’s Wilmer Leon added that the reason French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz don’t want to address the collapse of their biggest economic bloc in the world is because it was done at the “behest of the United States”. “The US really engineered this war,” said Lazare. “I don’t want to let France and Britain off the hook because they were solidly behind US efforts, but this is an American-led effort which really installed a nationalist government in Kiev, which was itching for a fight with Russia, which got one and then, followed by a full scale military invasion in February 2022.”

“The US thought it would win that war easily,” he continued. “But now the war is going very poorly. And it turns out that the US really had a very poor idea of what it was getting into. Now, the problem is that the US will not suffer the consequences anywhere near to the degree the Europeans will.” “So, it’s a case that they followed the US, they tag along happily behind it, and now they’ve got to pay the price for their own behavior. It’s crazy, and I do agree that there’s going to be a reckoning.” The EU’s working class is growing increasingly opposed to conflict with Russia as their economy suffers from Western imposed sanctions which saw them lose access to cheap and reliable Russian energy. The economic growth forecast for Germany, for instance, was cut down to 0.2% in 2024 from a previous projection of 1.3%, according to a recent report. Robert Habeck, Germany’s Vice-Chancellor, has said the country is performing “dramatically bad.”

Far toos much war talk coming out of France.

• French Army ‘Ready For War’ – Top General (RT)

France is ready to face whatever developments unfold internationally and is prepared for the “toughest engagements” to protect itself, the chief of staff of the French Army, Gen. Pierre Schill, said in an interview published on Tuesday. In recent weeks, French President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly refused to rule out Western troops being sent to Ukraine at some point to help Kiev in its fight against Moscow, which he described as an “adversary” of Paris. France’s forces are “ready,” Schill told Le Monde, stressing that “whatever the developments in the international situation, the French can be convinced: their soldiers will respond.” Schill said France has “international responsibilities” and is linked by defense agreements to “states exposed to major threats,” and must therefore have its forces trained and interoperable with allied armies.

He added that nuclear deterrence “is not a universal guarantee” because it does not guard against conflicts that would remain “below the threshold of vital interests.” Schill said that the Army must show itself a credible force through responsiveness in terms of force projection and the ability to carry out operations of increased scope. The general said that France currently has the capacity to commit a division of around 20,000 men within 30 days and has the means to command an army corps of up to 60,000 which includes allied divisions. In an interview with the TF1 and France 2 channels last week, President Macron said that France is “not waging war on Russia” by supporting Kiev, but labeled Russia an “adversary” and has stood by his remarks that a potential deployment of NATO troops to the country could not be “excluded.”

His statements drew a wave of denials from most of France’s fellow NATO members and officials – including Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – about having any intention to deploy their forces to Ukraine. At the same time, Spain’s El Pais reported on Monday that the US-led bloc has already been involved “in virtually every possible aspect” of the conflict and that active and former military personnel from NATO states have been operating in the country overseeing Kiev’s use of Western-supplied weapons. Moscow has repeatedly described the conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, while Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned against escalation and said that a direct clash between NATO and Russia would be “one step shy of a full-scale World War III.”

French troops
https://twitter.com/i/status/1770143287040459213

Macron’s bet: war with France means war with NATO.

• France Preparing to Deploy Military Contingent in Ukraine: Russian Intel (Sp.)

France is preparing to deploy a contingent of troops in Ukraine, with the first echelon to include about 2,000 soldiers, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergei Naryshkin has announced. “The country’s current leadership does not care about the death of ordinary Frenchmen and the concerns of the country’s generals. According to information received by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, a contingent of troops is already being prepared to be sent to Ukraine. At the initial stage, it will number about 2,000 people,” Naryshkin said in a statement Tuesday. According to the SVR head’s information, France’s generals are concerned about the difficulty of transferring such a large force to Ukraine and stationing it there unnoticed. Naryshkin warned that any French forces arriving in Ukraine “will become a legitimate priority target” for Russia’s military, with the same fate to await them as has already befallen those who fell during previous instances of French aggression against Moscow.

The SVR head also confirmed that those French nationals already in Ukraine (presumably fighting as mercenaries), have suffered losses not experienced by Paris since Algeria’s war of liberation against French control in the 1960s, hence concerns among the military leadership about the threat of discontent among mid-level officers in the French Army about the prospects of being deployed in Ukraine. President Macron has been the loudest voice among any NATO leaders in warning that he wouldn’t rule out sending troops to Ukraine “at some point.” “Maybe at some point – I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative – we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces,” Macron told Le Parisien last Friday. “France’s strength is that we can do it,” he added.

Macron riled up his NATO allies, particularly Germany, in early March by urging Europe not to be “cowards” in supporting the Kiev regime using all available means.If late February, he warned that he wouldn’t “rule out” sending French forces east. The president was roundly condemned by French opposition leaders for his remarks, with politicians both on the left and the right accusing him of playing with the lives of the French people and risking a new world war for the sake of his personal geopolitical ambitions. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova went further, accusing Macron of trying to recreate “French SS Division Charlemagne II to defend President Volodymyr Zelensky’s bunker.” The extent of the French mercenary presence in Ukraine was revealed in January, when a Russian missile strike killed and injured dozens of fighters in Kharkov.

NATO will not gain control over the Black Sea

In case of a potential conflict with Russia, NATO will gain control not only over the Baltic Sea, but also over the Black Sea

The construction of the largest #NATO base in #Europe has begun in #Romania. The project will include runways, hangars for military aircraft, schools,… pic.twitter.com/n608LJMTgT

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 18, 2024

“..There are no resources in this country, there is no one to fight.”

• Ukraine’s Losses ‘In The Millions’ – Polish General (RT)

Ukraine’s losses in the conflict with Russia should be counted “in the millions,” the former chief of the Polish General Staff, Rajmund Andrzejczak, has claimed. Kiev “is losing the war” and does not have the resources to sustain the fight against Moscow, he added. In an interview with the Polsat broadcaster on Monday, the retired general described Ukraine’s battlefield situation as “very dramatic” and insisted that “there are no miracles in war.”
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s decision to replace his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, with Aleksandr Syrsky has failed to make a significant difference as the same issues remain for Kiev’s new commander-in-chief, Andrzejczak added. According to the retired general, Ukraine is suffering deficits in equipment and manpower, with losses taking their toll on its capabilities. “They are missing over 10 million people. I estimate that the losses should be counted in the millions, not hundreds of thousands. There are no resources in this country, there is no one to fight.”

“The Ukrainians are losing this war,” Andrzejczak stated, pointing to media reports suggesting that Kiev is running out of anti-aircraft missiles to protect itself from Russian strikes. Echoing warnings from several Western leaders in recent weeks, Andrzejczak called for arms production to be boosted and argued that the West should prepare for a full-scale conflict with Russia within two or three years. Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted that Moscow has no plans or interest in attacking NATO. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu stated last month that Ukraine had lost more than 444,000 troops since the start of the conflict in February 2022. The hostilities have also triggered an exodus of Ukrainian refugees, with almost 6.5 million recorded worldwide, according to UN data.

Officials in Kiev have repeatedly complained that Western arms shipments have been inadequate. Those calls have grown louder as US President Joe Biden’s request to provide an additional $60 billion in aid remains stalled in Congress, due to Republican demands to strengthen American border security. Kiev is also mulling a new mobilization bill that would lower the minimum draft age for men from 27 to 25, with reported plans to send 500,000 new troops to the frontline. Against this backdrop, the Russian military last month pushed Kiev out of the strategic Donbass city of Avdeevka, also liberating several nearby settlements. The former stronghold has been on the front line since 2014 and was frequently used by Kiev to shell residential blocks in the nearby city of Donetsk.

“You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.” “We need more people in the line..”

• Lindsey Graham Tells Ukraine To Draft Younger Soldiers (RT)

US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has urged the Ukrainian parliament to pass a highly controversial mobilization bill that would lower the minimum conscription age from 27 to 25 to compensate for battlefield losses. At the same time, he advocated a scheme in which the US would provide Ukraine with loans instead of non-repayable aid. Kiev announced general mobilization in February 2022 shortly after the start of the conflict, with men between 27 and 60 eligible to be called up, although those over the age of 18 could also volunteer. In December, Ukrainian officials proposed a bill expanding the draft bracket, with reported plans to send as many as 500,000 fresh soldiers to the front line. On Monday, Graham traveled to Kiev to discuss continued US support for Ukraine with President Vladimir Zelensky. Speaking to reporters, he said that he hoped that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join the fight.

“I can’t believe [the conscription threshold] is at 27,” he added, as quoted by the Washington Post. “You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27.” “We need more people in the line,” he said. Graham also stressed that Ukrainians need to serve regardless of whether the US sends arms to Kiev or not. “No matter what we do, you’re fighting for you.” The US has struggled to approve President Joe Biden’s aid request earmarking $60 billion for Ukraine due to Republican opposition demanding that the White House do more to enhance security on the southern border. Moreover, Graham appeared to endorse the approach of GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump who has advocated providing aid to Kiev in form of loans on “extraordinarily good terms.”

“I was very direct with President Zelensky. You can expect me to always be in your corner, but it’s not unfair for me to ask you and other allies: Pay us back down the road, if you can,” the senator said. Graham’s call for Kiev to extend the draft bracket comes as Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu last month estimated Ukrainian losses since the start of the conflict at more than 444,000 troops. Meanwhile, Zelensky has claimed that Kiev has suffered only 31,000 dead. Last year, President Vladimir Putin said that Western countries seemed determined “to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.” He also noted at the time that while the West could provide Kiev with new arms, Ukraine’s manpower is not limitless.

“..who the main beneficiaries of the spending bonanza really are (hint: it’s not the Ukrainians)..”

• US Military-Industrial Complex Jacks Up Prices Amid Ukraine Proxy War (Sp.)

Dedicated Ukraine proxy war supporter and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has laced into America’s biggest defense contractors, accusing them of price gouging. “Like a majority of Americans, I believe it is in the vital interest of the United States and the international community to fight off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. But many defense contractors see the war primarily as a way to line their own pockets. The RTX Corporation, formally Raytheon, has increased prices for its Stinger missiles sevenfold since 1991. Today, it costs the United States $400,000 to replace each Stinger sent to Ukraine – an outrageous price increase that cannot even remotely be explained by inflation, increased costs, or advances in quality,” Sanders complained in an essay published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Monday.

“When contractors pad their profits, fewer weapons reach Ukrainians on the frontlines. Congress must rein in this kind of war profiteering by more closely examining contracts, taking back payments that turn out to be excessive, and creating a tax on windfall profits,” Sanders urged. The senator’s shock and outrage over the US military-industrial complex’s war profiteering is in itself a surprise. Serving as a congressman between 1991 and 2007 and as a senator from 2007 onward, Sanders has been part of Washington political establishment for over 30 years now. One might think that to be more than enough time to realize that obscene profitmaking is the name of the arms industry’s game.

The senator’s farfetched epiphany aside, his point stands. Since the 1990s, US weapons giants from Raytheon and Lockheed to BAE Systems to General Dynamics have jacked prices on everything from man-portable anti-tank and air defense missiles to artillery, tanks, drones and more. In other words, the Stinger certainly isn’t the only example of out of control costs at the Pentagon. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates total Western military assistance to Ukraine to have hit $113+ billion in 2024. On first glance, that figure sounds impressive, representing nearly double Russia’s entire pre-conflict defense budget of $66 billion in 2021. Taking account of the seemingly out-of-control price increases of US weapons, however, a different picture emerges on the capabilities given to Kiev, and about who the main beneficiaries of the spending bonanza really are (hint: it’s not the Ukrainians).

“..Apple will disable all iPhones in the Russian Federation, and Google will disable non-jailbroken Android phones..”

• iPhones Won’t Work In Case Of World War III – Russian MP (RT)

Western smartphones could stop working in Russia if the Ukraine conflict turns into a global war, Anton Gorelkin, deputy head of the Russian State Duma’s Information Policy Committee, warned in an interview posted to the YouTube channel Telega Reality. According to the MP, if the conflict “moves to another stage,” everyone will “up the stakes,” including the tech companies. “I’m talking about something that some experts call World War III. In this scenario, I fully expect that Apple will disable all iPhones in the Russian Federation, and Google will disable non-jailbroken Android phones,” he stated. He warned that in such a case the Russian authorities and tech experts could retaliate with similar actions regarding Western tech companies, although he did not specify what these actions could be. Gorelkin also admitted that Russia currently has no alternatives to replace Western smartphones or the software they use. He predicted, however, that things may change in 5-10 years, as Russia’s IT sphere is rapidly developing, especially since the exit of a number of foreign companies from the country’s market.

Gorelkin is not the first person to suggest the possibility that Western gadgets will stop working in Russia. Various experts warned that such a scenario was technically possible for all devices that require software updates from companies abroad, or have options that allow owners to remotely find and block a phone that has gone missing. However, so far Western tech companies have stopped short at removing undesirable applications from their app stores and disabling the use of the payment services Apple Pay and Google Pay on phones belonging to Russian users. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently weighed in on the possibility of the Ukraine conflict turning into a global war. During a question-and-answer session at his campaign headquarters in Moscow on Sunday night, he commented on recent statements from members of the US-led military bloc on the possibility of NATO troops being deployed in Ukraine. Putin said that such a move would be seen as a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, which “would be one step shy of a full-scale World War III.”

“.. real wages measured against pre-crisis forecasts dropped by 4% from April 2022 to March 2023, while output declined by 4.1%..”

• German Living Standards In ‘Unprecedented post-WW2 Slump’ (RT)

Germany’s 2022 living standards took the biggest downturn since World War II, a report released by the Forum for a New Economy on Monday has suggested. The decline is attributed to the energy shocks that sent prices for consumers soaring. Economists from the Berlin-based think-tank highlighted that the decline in Germany’s economic output recorded in 2022 is comparable to the financial crisis of 2008 and the short-lived decline during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The failure to protect the country’s industrial sector from energy price spikes is expected to turn the 2020s into “a lost decade for Germany,” the analysts have warned, calling the crisis “the worst economic downturn in the country since World War II.” For years, Germany’s prized industrial sector had been fueled by relatively inexpensive Russian gas. However, since the Ukraine conflict erupted in 2022, Berlin has opted to forgo energy from Russia in favor of costlier alternatives, including American liquefied natural gas.

According to the report, real wages measured against pre-crisis forecasts dropped by 4% from April 2022 to March 2023, while output declined by 4.1%. Germany’s economy shrank by 0.3% in 2023, according to the federal statistics agency Destatis. However, the country managed to avoid a technical recession after the second-quarter figures were revised to 0.1% growth. Two consecutive quarters of negative growth are widely considered to mark a technical recession. The Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, recently forecast growth of 0.4% in 2024. However, some financial institutions, such as the country’s two largest lenders, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, expect German GDP to decline again this year. Meanwhile, EU Commission’s most recent forecast for the Eurozone shows an expected increase in GDP of only 0.8% in 2024, down from the previous forecast of 1.2% growth made last November.

“We cannot affect the outcome of the election… but just to spite them we need to make some stupid statement.”

• Medvedev Reacts To Germany’s Putin Snub (RT)

Berlin’s decision not to refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin by his proper title in government documents is ridiculous and possibly a sign of a mental disorder, officials in Moscow have said. The diplomatic snub was announced on Monday in an effort to discredit last week’s presidential election in Russia. Germany and other Western nations claim the electoral process was neither free nor fair. A government spokesperson said the move was symbolic, noting that communications between Berlin and Russia were severely limited anyway. Reacting to the news, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said the stunt “comes from shameful weakness.”

He claimed that Germany was essentially saying “We cannot affect the outcome of the election… but just to spite them we need to make some stupid statement.”If Germany does not recognize Putin as the legitimate head of Russia, how does it intend to negotiate with Moscow and what value would any outcome of such talks have, asked Medvedev, who is the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the decision not to use Putin’s official title looked like the result of a self-induced “wild phobia,” an inability to name the source of one’s fear. ”This is something that differentiates a healthy person from someone who is not. They appear to be in a state of paranoia,” she remarked during an interview.

Western rhetoric following Putin’s re-election had contrasted with the reaction of most nations of the world, which had congratulated the president, Zakharova noted. The US and its allies should “take care of themselves and their problems” instead of picking on other sovereign states, she suggested. The Russian president has dismissed Western criticism of his election win, claiming that it was made in bad faith by governments seeking to contain Russia. ”What did you expect? For them to stand up in applause or something? They are fighting against us, including with arms,” Putin said following his victory.

“In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine. We are in a state of famine..”

• ‘Catastrophic’ Hunger Has Gripped Gaza (RT)

Famine conditions now exist in the northern part of Gaza, a UN monitor group warned on Monday. Around 300,000 people remain trapped in the area, following months of Israeli bombardment that has left over 31,000 people dead. The UN-backed report also warns that more than 70% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million faces “catastrophic hunger.” The Integrated Food-Security Phase Classification (IPC) said that mass death is now imminent without an immediate ceasefire and deliveries of food aid to the areas affected by the fighting. More than a dozen children in Gaza, including newborn babies, have starved to death and many more are at risk from soaring malnutrition. UN aid agencies warned earlier in March that urgently-needed humanitarian aid is being blocked from entering the Palestinian enclave.

The IPC estimated that two out of every 10,000 people will die daily from starvation, malnutrition, and disease if not helped immediately. “The actions needed to prevent famine require an immediate political decision for a ceasefire together with a significant and immediate increase in humanitarian and commercial access to the entire population of Gaza,” the report said. Israel has been criticized by its Western partners since it began launching retaliatory strikes against Hamas militants following their attack on Israel on October 7. “In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine. We are in a state of famine,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said at the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels on Monday.

He also accused Israel of “using starvation as a weapon of war.” Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded by saying, “Israel allows extensive humanitarian aid into Gaza,” and told Borrell “to stop attacking Israel and recognize our right to self-defense against Hamas’ crimes.” Efforts to reach a truce between Hamas and Israel are ongoing, with no breakthrough so far as the hostilities continue. Heavy fighting erupted on Monday in and around Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital complex. The Israeli Army said it was combatting Hamas militants there and advised civilians to evacuate.

Sachs Israel

“Israel has the most extremist religious nationalist government in its history. They have no intention of living side by side with the Palestinians…there’s no end game here politically other than complete domination and ethnic cleansing.”

-Jeffrey Sachshttps://t.co/O3nWFTDTI2 pic.twitter.com/R5z6KRPUWK

— Afshin Rattansi (@afshinrattansi) March 19, 2024

“..the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the border..”

• Supreme Court Allows Texas To Start Arresting And Deporting Illegal Aliens (ZH)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a blow to the Biden administration’s attempts to keep the US border open – allowing Texas to enforce a new law giving local police the power to arrest migrants. With three liberal justices dissenting, the conservative-majority court rejected an emergency request by the Biden administration which claimed that states have no authority to legislate on immigration. The ruling means that Texas’ law can go into effect while litigation continues in lower courts. The law, SB4, allows police to arrest migrants who illegally cross into the United States from Mexico, and imposes criminal penalties. It also empowers judges to deport people to Mexico. “Texas is the nation’s first-line defense against transnational violence and has been forced to deal with the deadly consequences of the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the border,” Texas argued in court papers.

The dispute is the latest clash between the Biden administration and Texas over immigration enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border. A federal judge blocked the law after the Biden administration sued, but the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a brief order that it could go into effect March 10 if the Supreme Court declined to intervene. On March 4, Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary freeze on the law to give the Supreme Court time to consider the federal government’s request. -NBC News. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in court filings that Texas’ law is “flatly inconsistent” with Supreme Court precedent dating back 100 years. “Those decisions recognize that the authority to admit and remove noncitizens is a core responsibility of the national government, and that where Congress has enacted a law addressing those issues, state law is preempted,” she said, adding that the appeals court did not explain its reasoning for allowing the law to go into effect.

And what about the GDP? The new ruling may put a crimp in the Biden administration’s seeming plan to flood the country with low-wage labor in an effort to boost GDP, which Democrats now insist would benefit to the tune of $7 trillion thanks to illegal immigrants – who are allowed to work indefinitely whilst waiting for the US immigration system to process their asylum claims. Recall that 10 million illegals have entered the US under Biden, while virtually all of the job gains under Biden have gone to foreign-born workers, looks like their ‘great replacement’ ~~theory~~ scheme has just suffered a swift kick to the huevos. “This unprecedented surge in illegal immigration isn’t an accident. It is the result of deliberate policy choices by the Biden administration,” said Eric Ruark, Director of Research for Numbers USA, a nonprofit that advocates for immigration restrictions.

It’s finally happening, Maricopa County being served! If any Law Enforcement goes against the American people for Illegal Immigrants, they are committing Treason! pic.twitter.com/kv29RDyJEt

— ꪻꫝể ꪻꫝể (@TheThe1776) March 19, 2024

BREAKING: Supreme Court Grants Texas Authority to Arrest Undocumented Immigrants Pending Final Ruling, Making Border Crossings a State Crime. WATCHpic.twitter.com/gxVMiHSgHW

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) March 19, 2024

“..Is there a pattern here of likely guilt that is contextualized into a not guilty assessment?..”

• Guilty!—But Not Really Guilty? (Victor Davis Hanson)

In 2011, then Homeland Security Advisor to President Obama, John Brennan, swore before Congress that drone-targeted assassination missions near the Pakistani border had not led to “a single collateral death.” That was an obvious lie with grave consequences, given that Brennan was sworn under oath and was one of the top officials in the US national security community. Yet there were no subsequent repercussions. In fact, the opposite occurred. Brennan was subsequently rewarded with a 2013 appointment as CIA. But the next year, once again, Brennan lied to Congress, assuring the Senate Intelligence Committee that his CIA had not secretly accessed senate staffers’ computers. Again, there were no consequences for his repeated lies. Instead, Brennan, upon retirement, went on to be an MSNBC/NBC analyst who helped to promulgate the Russian collusion/laptop disinformation hoaxes.

In 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also lied under oath to Congress when he laughably stated that the National Security Agency did not spy on American citizens. Later, when called out by senators, Clapper fudged in a televised interview. “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying no.” Try that contortion with the IRS. Some members of Congress referred a criminal complaint of perjury against Brennan to then Attorney General Eric Holder. Nothing happened. Again, one of the chiefs of the American national security community was exempted after lying to members of Congress. Clapper went on to a lucrative position as a CNN national security analyst, and at one point he claimed that Trump was a Putin “asset.”

As far as Eric Holder, he had earlier defied a congressional subpoena and was held in contempt by the House. The Department of Justice, however, chose not to pursue the complaint. Later in the Trump administration, Trump adviser Peter Navarro would be sentenced to four months in jail for similarly resisting a congressional subpoena. Was it a crime or not to resist a congressional subpoena? The Justice Department’s Inspector General concluded that Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director and interim director, had lied repeatedly to a variety of officials, including FBI Director James Comey, various FBI agents, and officials of the Office of the Inspector General. On some of these occasions, McCabe was sworn under oath. Yet in 2020, the Department of Justice chose not to pursue the IG’s criminal referrals. McCabe went on to become an outspoken CNN News contributor. Note that Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s National Security Advisor, was indicted—and convicted—for similarly lying to the FBI in 2017.

In 2016, an FBI investigation found that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, had violated the law by transmitting and receiving classified information over an unsecured private server. Subsequently, she destroyed thousands of emails and some devices, some of which were under subpoena. FBI Director James Comey found that “any reasonable person” should have known it was illegal to transmit classified information in such a sloppy fashion. Comey, however, found that “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” Translated, that meant Hillary Clinton had likely broken the law, but it was unlikely that any prosecutor like Comey would indict the then-current Democratic nominee for president and former Secretary of State—at least in the fashion that state and federal prosecutors would later file over 90 indictments against Donald Trump.

In 2018, the now-former FBI Director James Comey on some 245 occasions claimed under oath to Congress that he did not know or could not remember essential facts in the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Donald Trump, which he had authorized. In addition, the Office of the Inspector General of the Justice Department found that Comey had broken the law by violating both DOJ and FBI policies, as well as the FBI’s employment agreement—especially by retaining in his personal safe copies of four bureau memos concerning a confidential conversation with President Trump. Elements in the memos from that meeting likely contained classified information. Yet Comey leaked it to a friend without a security clearance in order to make it public. Despite the damning IG report, the Department of Justice chose not to prosecute Comey. Is there a pattern here of likely guilt that is contextualized into a not guilty assessment—and not guilty due to the prosecutorial psychoanalysis of the jury—that a guilty verdict would be difficult to obtain?

“For the first time in my 94 years on earth, I fear for the future of our democracy..”

“Joe Biden has fulfilled Barack Obama’s promise to “transform” America..”

• It’s Time for GOP To Unite Behind Trump (Marcus)

For the first time in my 94 years on earth, I fear for the future of our democracy. I see the federal government using its enormous powers with contempt for the governed instead of with the consent of the governed as our founders envisioned. Fundamental change in America is occurring by executive order or the force of the government’s police powers instead of through the legislative process required by the Constitution. From this, I fear that free market capitalism may be replaced by big government socialism. I also fear the erosion of our rights and freedoms, including parental rights, freedom of speech and religion, and due process. In the past, I always had the confidence that a president who was a threat to democracy could be voted out of office in the next election. I am no longer that confident today. My lack of confidence is because the media today is not the watchdog over government that our Founders intended it to be. It is instead the lapdog of government, shielding the public from the entire truth about the policies and actions of the current administration.

One vivid example of this became a meme: the television reporters declaring while doing their standups that the riots in 2020 were “mainly peaceful” as fires raged in the background. I was not surprised earlier this month by the reprise of “Russia collusion.” Nor will I be surprised if the media soon characterizes a Trump rally as an “insurrection.” The media may be the biggest threat to our democracy since only well-informed voters guarantee the future of it. There is more on the line in this year’s presidential election than ever before. It is a mistake to assume that this election will be a rerun of 2020. The presumptive nominees and the world have changed since then. President Biden can no longer portray himself as “kindly Uncle Joe” or a moderate Democrat. His recent State of the Union Address, which was the most divisive of any I recall, reveals he is a very angry man and not someone Americans would want as their uncle. His policies and the undemocratic means by which he implemented them confirm he has been pulled to the far left by far-left extremists in the Democrat Party.

The Biden administration’s policies invited an invasion along our southern border by millions of unvetted people, compromised national security, allowed crime to spin out of control in our streets, forced middle-class Americans to raid their retirement funds to put food on their tables, and divided America more than at any time in our history since the Civil War. Joe Biden has fulfilled Barack Obama’s promise to “transform” America. This is not a welcome transformation, as confirmed by Biden’s dismal job approval ratings. When Donald Trump was in office, his Democrats and their media allies portrayed him as a pugnacious New Yorker who “did not act presidential” and somehow craved dictatorial powers. They’re still doing this, although they’ve upped the rhetoric. Over the weekend, Nancy Pelosi invoked Adolf Hitler while attacking the former president. His detractors are unwilling to look past Trump’s rough edges and see the results he achieved during his first of what I hope will be two terms.

His policies achieved the highest wage rate in 50 years while keeping inflation in check, the lowest unemployment rate for minorities, and energy independence for America, among other stunning results. Moreover, his policies and the projection of his and America’s strength kept the country out of any new foreign conflicts. It is essential to our national security that America’s enemies fear our president. This does not mean that President Trump did not have to do better. He did, and he has done so since leaving office. Having become close to him in the last seven years, I have seen a side of him that is not seen by the public. He is truly one of the most misunderstood men in America, and I and other friends of his have urged him to let the public see the real Donald Trump. His recent praise of Nikki Haley was unifying and shows the magnanimous side of him that his friends often see. Expect more of the real Donald Trump to emerge.

“..You live in a country where the Attorney General is abetting, in fact calling for voter fraud, and that’s the only chance they have to get their guy re-elected.”

• How the Democrats Plan To Steal the Election (Lew Rockwell)

This isn’t the first time the Left has stolen an election. It happened in the 2020 presidential election too. Ron Unz offers his usual cogent analysis: “There does seem to be considerable circumstantial evidence of widespread ballot fraud by Democratic Party forces, hardly surprising given the apocalyptic manner in which so many of their leaders had characterized the threat of a Trump reelection. After all, if they sincerely believed that a Trump victory would be catastrophic for America why would they not use every possible means, fair and foul alike, to save our country from that dire fate? In particular, several of the major swing-states contain large cities—Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta—that are both totally controlled by the Democratic Party and also notoriously corrupt, and various eye-witnesses have suggested that the huge anti-Trump margins they provided may have been heavily ‘padded’ to ensure the candidate’s defeat.”

In a program aired right after Biden’s pitiful State of the Union speech, the great Tucker Carlson pointed out that Biden’s “Justice” Department has already confessed that it plans to rig the election. It will do this by banning voter ID laws as “racist.” This permits an unlimited number of fake votes: “If Joe Biden is so good at politics, why is he losing to Donald Trump, who the rest of us were assured was a retarded racist who no normal person would vote for? But now Joe Biden is getting stomped by Donald Trump, but he’s also at the same time good at politics? Right. Again, they can’t win, but they’re not giving up. So what does that tell you? Well, they’re going to steal the election. We know they’re going to steal the election because they’re now saying so out loud. Here is the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of this country in Selma, Alabama, just the other day. [Now Carlson quotes the Attorney General, Merrick Garland:] “The right to vote is still under attack, and that is why the Justice Department is fighting back. That is why one of the first things I did when I came into office was to double the size of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division.

That is why we are challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes and voter ID requirements. That is why we are working to block the adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the vote of Black voters and other voters of color. [Carlson then comments on Garland:] “Did you catch that? Of course, you’re a racist. That’s always the takeaway. But consider the details of what the Attorney General of the United States just said. Mail-in balloting, drop boxes, voter ID requirements. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States Government is telling you that it’s immoral, in fact racist, in fact illegal to ask people for their IDs when they vote to verify they are who they say they are. What is that? Well, no one ever talks about this, but the justification for it is that somehow people of color, Black people, don’t have state-issued IDs.

Somehow they’re living in a country where you can do virtually nothing without proving your identity with a government-issued ID without government-issued IDs. They can’t fly on planes, they can’t have checking accounts, they can’t have any interaction with the government, state, local, or federal. They can’t stay in hotels. They can’t have credit cards. Because someone without a state-issued ID can’t do any of those things. But what’s so interesting is these same people, very much including the Attorney General and the administration he serves, is working to eliminate cash, to make this a cashless society. Have you been to a stadium event recently? No cash accepted. You have to have a credit card. In order to get a credit card you need a state-issued ID, and somehow that’s not racist. But it is racist to ask people to prove their identity when they choose the next President of the United States. That doesn’t make any sense at all. That’s a lie. It’s an easily provable lie, and anyone telling that lie is advocating for mass voter fraud, which the Attorney General is. There’s no other way to read it. So you should know that. You live in a country where the Attorney General is abetting, in fact calling for voter fraud, and that’s the only chance they have to get their guy re-elected.”

“..the drug activates genes in neurons that affect cell growth, improves brain function and reduces the risks of inflammation..”

• Viagra May Prevent Alzheimer’s (RT)

Sildenafil, the generic name for Viagra, may not only treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension, but also ward off cognitive decline, according to research published by the Cleveland Clinic Genome Center earlier this month. The authors of the study, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease on March 1, found that those who took sildenafil were 30% to 54% less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers used real-world patient data from the MarketScan Medicare Supplemental database (2012-2017) and the Clinformatics database (2007-2020) to arrive at the conclusion.

The research was focused on those taking sildenafil or four comparator drugs, including bumetanide, furosemide, spironolactone, and nifedipine. Comparators are existing marketed drug products, or new drugs in development, including placebo versions. Gender, age, race, and concurrent diseases of the patients were factored in. The study concluded that the use of sildenafil was associated with reduced likelihood of Alzheimer’s relative to the control drugs. The results also showed that the drug activates genes in neurons that affect cell growth, improves brain function and reduces the risks of inflammation.

“We used artificial intelligence to integrate data across multiple domains which all indicated sildenafil’s potential against this devastating neurological disease,” said Feixiong Cheng, director of the Cleveland Clinic Genome Center, who led the study. Similar conclusions about sildenafil were made by researchers from University College London earlier this year. The study, published in the journal Neurology last month, included nearly 270,000 men who were diagnosed with erectile dysfunction and had no cognitive problems at the beginning of the research work. Those taking the drugs were 18% less likely to develop the dementia-causing condition.

CO2

Dr. Judith Curry, climatologist: Through most of Earth's geologic history CO2 has been much higher in order of magnitude higher even. There's nothing wrong with high CO2 in the atmosphere and CO2 isn't particularly a control knob on surface temperature. I mean the Earth's… pic.twitter.com/YPtvV2uUIl

— Camus (@newstart_2024) March 19, 2024

Rik Mayall
https://twitter.com/i/status/1770026300385743303

Dogshower

pic.twitter.com/KTZqWSCdRC

— Doglover (@puppiesDoglover) March 19, 2024

Frens

pic.twitter.com/y2ZEV0s6dI

— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) March 19, 2024

Owl
https://twitter.com/i/status/1769916272089952458

Luna

Luna, an illusory kinetic sculpture by MEZMOGLOBE pic.twitter.com/dD7vNhXUXG

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 19, 2024

SF 1950s

San Francisco in the 1950s. What do you notice?

This is the society that was stolen from you. pic.twitter.com/1XEvS1FY7B

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) March 18, 2024

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle January 6 2024

Jan 062024

January 6, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, disqualification, Gaza, Hitler, labor markets, Lindsey Graham, nazi, SCOTUS, Trump 30 Responses »

Marc Riboud Painting the Eiffel Tower 1953

• Biden Vows To Protect US Democracy From ‘Nazi’ Trump (RT)

• Supreme Court Takes Up Colorado Trump Ballot Disqualification Case (ET)

• Trump Org Refutes House Democrat Report on Trump’s Finances (ET)

• Genocide in Gaza (John Mearsheimer)

• The “Transfer” of Palestinians Out of Gaza Is Not a “Voluntary Migration”(TO)

• Gaza Destroys Western Divide-and-Rule Narratives (Narwani)

• Ex-Pentagon Analyst: Mideast Crisis May Spiral Out of Control (Sp.)

• Lindsey Graham Vows To Make Iran’s ‘Worst Nightmare’ Come True (RT)

• After Military Collapse, Kiev Bets on Terrorism (Leiroz)

• Brussels Eyeing ‘Plan B’ To Finance Ukraine (RT)

• Musk Warns Against Invading Russia (RT)

• Recruitment Problems Plague US Military (Paul Craig Roberts)

• House GOP To Move Toward Holding Hunter Biden In Contempt Of Congress (CBS)

• New York To Sue Bus Companies … For Busing People (Turley)

• The Month That Labor Markets Fell Apart (Street)

Trump ad

⚠️HOLY SHIT⚠️

Trump posted this MUST WATCH video on Truth Social this morning, following the massive exposure of Deep State pedophilia.

Essentially mocking all the top players of the Deep State, including pics of Bill. This is Trump’s victory lap.

WE ARE SO FUCKING BACK! pic.twitter.com/r1OwGkGvMf

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) January 5, 2024

Kanekoa

In 2016, Victoria Nuland told Congress that US advisors serve in 12 Ukrainian ministries, US-trained police operate in 18 Ukrainian cities, the US Treasury helped close 60 Ukrainian banks while protecting depositors, and the US spent $266 million on training Ukrainian soldiers. pic.twitter.com/scOUCQQsdg

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 22, 2023

Harry Dunn – Pretty crazy

Reminder that this guy completely lied about his entire story about what happened to him on January 6

via @theblaze
pic.twitter.com/PGMaAFensJ https://t.co/nVeyOBiKrX

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 5, 2024

Scott Adams: “Illegal immigration is now ten-times as high as 2017 when the national conversation was already about it being too high. We can rule out “accidental.”

RFK

Not since I was a kid have we been as close to nuclear war as we are today. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders like my father and uncle, John F. Kennedy, had a profound fear of nuclear conflict. The Biden administration’s lack of caution is putting our future at risk. pic.twitter.com/xWEccOIgqt

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 6, 2024

Vivek

Vivek handles Regime Media like a boss.

NBC News reporter Dasha Burns has a meltdown as Vivek shreds her scripted reality. pic.twitter.com/PUuhjZl7Dj

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 5, 2024

Vivek Ramaswamy Says He Would Bring the 'Chainsaw' to Washington DC

"Day one, cut 75% of the federal bureaucracy. Mass firing. Not a chisel. Bring the chainsaw…Instead of using our own military to protect somebody else's border halfway around the world, or send supplies so… pic.twitter.com/jNAaG6ImfQ

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 4, 2024

My top goal is to reunite this country & pardoning Trump is a requirement to achieve that. Same goes for peaceful Jan 6 protestors, Julian Assange, Douglass Mackey, and Ross Ulbricht. I won’t wait until the last day like Presidents usually do. I’ll get it done on Jan 20, 2025 &… pic.twitter.com/wr9U8p4c9l

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) January 5, 2024

After months of brainstorming this is their strategy: Trump is Hitler.

“We’ve become an embarrassment as a country,” Trump added.”

• Biden Vows To Protect US Democracy From ‘Nazi’ Trump (RT)

US President Joe Biden has accused his Republican rival Donald Trump of seeking to take power through “political violence,” likening the former leader’s rhetoric to that used by “Nazi Germany” while deeming him a threat to American democracy itself. Biden launched a major broadside against Trump during a campaign speech in Pennsylvania on Friday night, citing the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol as a major part of the last president’s legacy. “Donald Trump’s campaign is about him, not America. Not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power,” Biden said, going on to slam Trump as “sick” and a “loser.” Recalling the unrest in the wake of the last presidential election, Biden went on to say that Trump and his supporters still embrace “political violence,” adding “Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future.”

He also drew a comparison between the Republican candidate and the Third Reich. “He calls those who oppose him vermin. He talks about the blood of Americans being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany,” the president continued, positing himself as a defender of American institutions. Trump hit back during his own remarks on Friday night, calling Biden’s speech a “pathetic fearmongering campaign event” while slamming the leader for “an unbroken streak of weakness, incompetence, corruption and failure.” “Biden, if you take a look at what he’s doing on the border or inflation, or our military, that horrible day in Afghanistan, you look at what he’s done with energy – all throughout the world, we’re an embarrassment as a country. We’ve become an embarrassment as a country,” Trump added.

Joe Biden brags in his J6 doomer speech that his DOJ has targeted 1,200 J6ers, convicted 900, and sentenced them to 840 years in prison. He wants his political opponents afraid this can happen to them too. What a sick man. pic.twitter.com/7Hq75IGrYw

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 5, 2024

They better be very clear and unanimous.

• Supreme Court Takes Up Colorado Trump Ballot Disqualification Case (ET)

The U.S. Supreme Court accepted a petition for immediate review regarding a Colorado Supreme Court decision to strike former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. “The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted,” reads the procedural order. Oral arguments are scheduled for Feb. 8. Petitioners’ and amicus briefs are due by Jan. 18, and respondents’ and amicus briefs are due by Jan. 31, with any reply briefs due by Feb. 5. The Colorado Supreme Court had disqualified President Trump as a candidate on Dec. 19 in an order that left little chance for the actual removal of his name from the ballot. On Dec. 27, the Colorado GOP filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking three separate questions regarding the application of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and political parties’ First Amendment rights to primary their candidate of choice.

On Jan. 3, President Trump filed a separate petition with a simpler question: Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in its ruling? The U.S. Supreme Court has taken up President Trump’s petition, and has yet to accept to reject the Colorado GOP’s petition. Trump Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the campaign “welcomed” the Supreme Court review. “We welcome a fair hearing at the Supreme Court to argue against the bad-faith, election-interfering, voter-suppressing, Democrat-backed and Biden-led, 14th Amendment abusing decision to remove President Trump’s name from the 2024 ballot in the state of Colorado,” he stated. He added that several of these challenges, including the one in Colorado, had been represented and funded by large, left-wing, out-of-state activist groups and have the effect of “disenfranchising voters.”

“We are confident that the fair-minded Supreme Court will unanimously affirm the civil rights of President Trump, and the voting rights of all Americans in a ruling that will squash all of the remaining ballot challenge hoaxes once and for all,” he stated. Just before the Supreme Court order, the campaign had issued a statement highlight the “precedent” of similar cases being dismissed in state and federal courts the past week. Colorado was the first state to disqualify President Trump, and the first state to hold hearings regarding the merits of a Section 3 challenge at all. The legal theory that President Trump can be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment rests on the premise that the events of Jan. 6, 2021, constituted an insurrection, and that President Trump actively participated in or instigated it.

It also assumes that individual state courts at various levels have the authority to adjudicate the eligibility of a presidential candidate under Section 3. There have been at least 60 of these challenges across the country in recent months, according to President Trump’s attorneys. However, the majority of these challenges have been dismissed for a wide range of reasons, with several courts citing lack of jurisdiction. Officials and some judges—including dissenting justices on the Colorado Supreme Court—have argued that if individual state courts were meant to be able to rule if a presidential candidate engaged in insurrection and whether that affected his eligibility, it could result in “chaos,” with upwards of 50 different rulings.

“.. the company voluntarily implemented a program to track payments from foreign governments, which the company donated to the U.S. Treasury Department annually.”

• Trump Org Refutes House Democrat Report on Trump’s Finances (ET)

The Trump Organization denied on Jan. 4 that former President Donald Trump improperly profited from his presidency, describing House Democrats’ claims to the contrary as “insane.” A new report published by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee asserts that the 45th president’s businesses took in at least an estimated $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments—including those of China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and others—during his term, in violation of the Constitution. The outlined payments mostly included spending on rent at Trump Tower and Trump World Tower—both in New York—and on stays at the Trump International Hotels in Washington and Las Vegas. The report also alleges that President Trump allowed those payments to influence his foreign policy moves, citing his decision not to sanction the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)—which leases office space in Trump Tower—as an example.

But Kimberly Benza, a Trump Organization spokesperson, told The Epoch Times via email that such claims were ridiculous. “That narrative is insane, especially given there is no President in United States history who was tougher on China than Donald Trump… a President who introduced billions and billions of dollars’ worth of tariffs on their goods and services,” she said. Ms. Benza stressed that ICBC—which accounted for roughly $5.4 million of the payments detailed in the report—had been a preexisting, long-term tenant at Trump Tower since 2008—“almost a decade before President Trump entered office.” As for the remaining funds, Ms. Benza noted that the Trump Organization does not have the “ability or viability” to prevent individuals from making reservations through third-party booking websites. Nonetheless, she said the company voluntarily implemented a program to track payments from foreign governments, which the company donated to the U.S. Treasury Department annually.

[..] “We still don’t know the extent of the foreign payments that Donald Trump received—or even the total number of countries that paid him and his businesses while he was President—because Committee Chairman James Comer and House Republicans buried any further evidence of the Trump family’s staggering corruption,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Oversight Democrat, charged in a Jan. 4 statement. “Despite these efforts, today’s report makes clear that former President Trump put lining his pockets with cash from foreign governments seeking policy favors over the interests of the American people.” The former president’s staff and advisers see the report differently. For Ms. Benza, it’s confirmation that House Democrats are “desperate to save face” amid Republicans’ ongoing investigations of President Joe Biden and his family members.

“There is a large difference between someone who leases commercial office space to a foreign company a decade ago … versus the son and family members of the Vice President extracting money from China, Ukraine, and Romania and others while providing no apparent or tangible goods and services,” she said. “It would be dishonest to not clearly distinguish between the two.” That view was echoed by Jason Meister, a member of President Trump’s campaign advisory panel in New York, who told The Epoch Times that there is no valid comparison between President Biden’s family finances and the Trump family’s businesses. “Democrats desperately want you to believe that diplomats in D.C. reserving hotel rooms or buying candied bacon at the Trump Hotel over four years is the same thing as Joe Biden converting his son into a bag man, to collect and then split with him the millions in graft he took from all around the world,” Mr. Meister said.

“One is reminded of how the Nazis talked about dealing with Jews when reading how Israelis in “positions of the highest responsibility” talk about dealing with the Palestinians.”

• Genocide in Gaza (John Mearsheimer)

I am writing to flag a truly important document that should be widely circulated and read carefully by anyone interested in the ongoing Gaza War. Specifically, I am referring to the 84-page “application” that South Africa filed with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 29 December 2023, accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.1 It maintains that Israel’s actions since the war began on 7 October 2023 “are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic … group in the Gaza Strip.” (1) That charge fits clearly under the definition of genocide in the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. The application is a superb description of what Israel is doing in Gaza. It is comprehensive, well-written, well-argued, and thoroughly documented. The application has three main components.

First, it describes in detail the horrors that the IDF has inflicted on the Palestinians since 7 October 2023 and explains why much more death and destruction is in store for them. Second, the application provides a substantial body of evidence showing that Israeli leaders have genocidal intent toward the Palestinians. (59-69) Indeed, the comments of Israeli leaders – all scrupulously documented – are shocking. One is reminded of how the Nazis talked about dealing with Jews when reading how Israelis in “positions of the highest responsibility” talk about dealing with the Palestinians. (59) In essence, the document argues that Israel’s actions in Gaza, combined with its leaders’ statements of intent, make it clear that Israeli policy is “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.” (39)

Third, the document goes to considerable lengths to put the Gaza war in a broader historical context, making it clear that Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza like caged animals for many years. It quotes from numerous UN reports detailing Israel’s cruel treatment of the Palestinians. In short, the application makes clear that what the Israelis have done in Gaza since 7 October is a more extreme version of what they were doing well before 7 October.

There is no question that many of the facts described in the South African document have previously been reported in the media. What makes the application so important, however, is that it brings all those facts together in one place and provides an overarching and thoroughly supported description of the Israeli genocide. In other words, it provides the big picture while not neglecting the details. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli government has labelled the charges a “blood libel” that “has no factual and judicial basis.” Moreover, Israel claims that “South Africa is collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.” A close reading of the document, however, makes it clear that there is no basis for these assertions. In fact, it is hard to see how Israel will be able to defend itself in a rational-legal way when the proceedings begin. After all, brute facts are hard to dispute.

“Every time I go back (to Gaza), I always think it cannot get worse, but every time I see more misery, more grief, more sadness..”

• The “Transfer” of Palestinians Out of Gaza Is Not a “Voluntary Migration”(TO)

Palestinians have known all along that the real objective of Israel’s horrendous assault on Gaza is emptying the Strip of all Palestinians and the return of Jewish settlements. After nearly 90 days of relentless bombardment and a lackluster effort on the part of the Israeli government to negotiate the release of the hostages taken by Hamas, it has become clear even to Israelis that Netanyahu’s declared goals of “dismantling Hamas, returning our hostages, and ensuring that in Gaza there will be no one that threatens Israel” are nothing more than a cover for the government’s “transfer” plan.

The first phase of the transfer plan commenced with the carpet bombing of northern Gaza and an evacuation order telling Palestinians to leave the area — one of the most densely populated in the world — and move to southern Gaza “where they will be safer.” But no sooner had they reached southern Gaza than bombs started to rain on them again — in Beit Lahia, Khan Younis, Maghazi, and other heavily populated residential neighborhoods. Nowhere is safe in Gaza; nowhere to hide from U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs. The 2.3 million inhabitants of the Strip are now squeezed into an even smaller over-crowded, open-air prison that is a third of the size of the previous one they were forced to evacuate from.

The “transfer” — or “voluntary migration” as some Israeli officials are calling it — is now being promoted as the humane solution for the people of Gaza who now populate a parcel of land that has been rendered completely unlivable, a fulfillment of a promise made by several Israeli government officials after the October 7 Hamas attack. Recall Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.… We will eliminate everything — they will regret it.” Or retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland telling Israeli media, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” After his return from a recent visit to the besieged Gaza Strip, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told the Global Refugee Forum in mid-December that the people of Gaza “are running out of time and options, as they face bombardment, deprivation, and disease in an ever-ever-shrinking space.”

Also speaking at the forum, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the siege to allow for sufficient aid. Grandi said, “Every time I go back (to Gaza), I always think it cannot get worse, but every time I see more misery, more grief, more sadness, and have the feeling that Gaza is not really a habitable place anymore.” In a lead editorial in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Knesset member Danny Danon was reported as saying, “We have to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries.… I’m talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians.” He added that he thinks that “the Arab states have a duty to help the Palestinians. They should have the decency to help instead of making inflammatory speeches.”

“..nothing has the power to inflame the region’s masses like this particular fight between right and wrong..”

• Gaza Destroys Western Divide-and-Rule Narratives (Narwani)

It could be a clean sweep. Decades of western-led narratives crafted to exploit differences throughout West Asia, create strife amid the region’s myriad communities, and advance western foreign policy objectives over the heads of bickering natives are now in ruins. The war in Gaza, it transpires, has blown a mile-wide hole in the falsehoods and fairytales that have kept West Asia distracted with internecine conflicts since at least the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Shia versus Sunni, Iran versus Arabs, secular versus Islamist: these are three of the west’s most nefarious narrative ploys that sought to control and redirect the region and its populations, and have even drawn Arab rulers into an ungodly alliance with Israel.

It took a rare conflict – uncooked and uncontrolled by Washington – to liberate West Asian masses from their narrative trance. Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza also brought instant clarity to the question of which Arabs and Muslims actually support Palestinian liberation – and which do not. Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi resistance factions, and Yemen’s Ansarallah – maligned by these western narratives – are now visibly the only regional players prepared to buttress the Gaza frontline, whether through funds, weapons, or armed clashes that aim to dilute and disperse Israeli military resources. The so-called ‘moderate Arabs,’ a misnomer for the western-centric, authoritarian Arab dictatorships subservient to Washington’s interests, have offered little more than lip service to the carnage in Gaza.

The Saudis called for support by hosting Arab and Islamic summits that were allowed to do and say nothing. The Emiratis and Jordanians trucked supplies to Israel that Ansarallah blockaded by sea. The mighty Egypt hosted delegations when all it needed to have done was to open the Rafah Crossing so Palestinians can eat. Qatar – once a major Hamas donor – now negotiates for the freedom of Israeli captives, while hosting Hamas ‘moderates,’ who are at odds with Gaza’s freedom fighters. And Turkiye’s trade with the Israeli occupation state continues to skyrocket (exports increased 35 percent from November to December 2023). Palestine, for the pro-west ‘moderate Arabs,’ is a carefully handled flag they occasionally wave publicly, but sabotage privately. So, they watch, transfixed and horrified today, at what social media and tens of millions of protesters have made crystal clear: Palestine remains the essential Arab and Muslim cause; it may ebb and flow, but nothing has the power to inflame the region’s masses like this particular fight between right and wrong.

“Whether the US will leave or not, I don’t know. I tend to doubt it because they have too much [interests there].”

• Ex-Pentagon Analyst: Mideast Crisis May Spiral Out of Control (Sp.)

Two powerful blasts killed close to 100 people in the Iranian city of Kerman this week, with Daesh (ISIL/ISIS)* claiming responsibility for the terror attack. However, former Pentagon senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof does not rule out that the terrorist group “might be trying to take credit for something as a cover for somebody else.” “I’m not surprised because ISIS has been known to work with the Israelis,” he told Sputnik. “We have an interesting context, particularly since the Israelis are very anti-Shia and ISIS is basically radical Sunnis. So it’s not surprising. And ISIS has a history of also detonating explosives in Iran. In fact, just a few years ago, they had a few explosions, I think, on the parliament building in Tehran. So it’s not unique.”

In the wake of the attack, Iranian authorities had suggested that the bombing might be linked to Tehran’s opposition to Israel’s Gaza war, assuming that Tel Aviv or Washington could have been behind it. President Ebrahim Raisi’s deputy, Mohammad Jamshidi, tweeted that: “Make no mistake. The responsibility for this crime lies with the US and Zionist regimes (Israel) and terrorism is just a tool.” The US and Israel have strongly denied having a hand in the deadly bombing, claiming that Sunni radical groups, including Daesh, could have carried out the attack. Shortly after, a post on Daesh’s Telegram account popped up saying that the terrorist group was behind the blasts. In a statement, the terrorist organization named Omar al-Mowahid and Sayefulla al-Mujahid as the perpetrators.

Nonetheless, the bombing has raised a lot of questions, especially given that Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas, was killed in a drone strike in southern Beirut just a day before. Al-Arouri’s assassination is widely believed to be committed by Israel The Wall Street Journal claimed on December 1 that Israel’s intelligence services were preparing to kill Hamas leaders around the world. Extraterritorial targeted killings of individuals designated as terrorists by Tel Aviv is Israel’s decades-long practice touted as a way to prevent terrorist attacks and scale down “collateral damage.” Likewise, the use of proxy groups is nothing new for Israel or the US, as per Sputnik’s interlocutor. For its part, the US has recently launched a military operation against Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and stepped up attacks on Shiite groups, belonging to the so-called Axis of Resistance, in Iraq.

“There was what seemed to be a further retaliation this morning against one of the Shia leaders in Baghdad of one of the militant groups,” said Maloof. “That was a US strike with a missile. (…) So it was a direct hit and inside of Baghdad. And so I think that that’s probably going to cause the Iraqis to start putting increasing pressure for the US forces to get out altogether. That seems to be the trend. The parliament did it a few years ago and nothing ever happened. Nobody moved out. Now, the prime minister has made a statement to that effect recently and I think last week that he wants American troops out of Iraq. Whether the US will leave or not, I don’t know. I tend to doubt it because they have too much [interests there].”

“His words came as Washington was reportedly preparing for the conflict between Israel and Hamas to spill over the borders of Gaza and expand further to the Middle East..”

• Lindsey Graham Vows To Make Iran’s ‘Worst Nightmare’ Come True (RT)

Washington will continue to actively support Israel and seek to realize a “nightmare” scenario for the Iranian leadership, US Senator Lindsey Graham told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Tel Aviv on Thursday. The US expressed its strong support for the Jewish State in October 2023 in the wake of a Hamas terrorist attack, which claimed some 1,200 lives and saw more than 240 people taken hostage. The Israeli retaliation campaign, which was also backed by the US, has already killed more than 22,000 people in the Palestinian enclave, according to local health officials. On Thursday, Graham told Netanyahu that both US lawmakers and the administration of President Joe Biden would “push forward to make Iran’s worst nightmare real,” adding that the US would “do everything we can” to support Israel.

He argued that West Jerusalem should strive for reconciliation with Arab nations, calling such an outcome “a nightmare for the ayatollah.” He also described establishing ties between Israel and the Arab world as an “absolutely essential ingredient to a better, more stable Mid-East and a safe and secure Israel and a prosperous Palestinian people.” The senator also stated that he was personally “more dedicated now to bringing stability to your country and this region.” Netanyahu responded by expressing his gratitude to Graham and vowed to continue Israel’s war campaign in Gaza. “We’re absolutely committed to achieving our war goals,” Netanyahu told Graham, adding that West Jerusalem would “apply maximum power with maximum precision everywhere that’s needed.”

Iran has repeatedly blamed Israel for the escalation in the region throughout the ongoing conflict as well as accused it of committing “genocide” in Gaza and setting “fire to the region.” Tehran also accused West Jerusalem’s Western backers, including the US, of employing double standards in their assessment of the situation in the Middle East. Last month, Graham, who is also known for his staunch anti-Iranian position, called for a bombing campaign against Iran, calling for the country’s oil fields and the Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters to be “blown off the map.” Graham is a retired US Air Force colonel but spent his entire military career in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps as a lawyer and then a judge. He also has a long history of promoting the use of force abroad.

His words came as Washington was reportedly preparing for the conflict between Israel and Hamas to spill over the borders of Gaza and expand further to the Middle East, according to Politico. The administration of US President Joe Biden was allegedly reviewing scenarios that could see Washington drawn into a major conflict in the region. A US response could be triggered by Yemeni Houthi fighters, who have been targeting commercial ships off Yemen’s coast in response to the attacks on Gaza by Israel, according to the news media outlet.

“..The attacks on Belgorod and other Russian demilitarized zones clearly show how close the Ukrainian regime is to definitive defeat..”

• After Military Collapse, Kiev Bets on Terrorism (Leiroz)

A major military escalation is taking place in the special operation zone – and even outside of it. Moscow is launching massive attacks against Ukraine after the demilitarized region of Belgorod was hit in terrorist actions by Kiev. Faced with military fiasco and the impossibility of continuing to fight through appropriate means, the neo-Nazi regime relies on terrorism as a war tactic against Russia. On December 30, Ukrainian forces launched a deadly attack with cluster weapons on Belgorod, killing dozens and injuring hundreds of people, including several children. There was no military target in the region to justify the attack, making it a deliberate action against civilians, which is why the attitude can be considered a crime under international law.

Russian diplomats at the UN called for an emergency meeting on the topic and Secretary General Antonio Guterres himself condemned Kiev’s actions. However, as expected, no consensus was reached on punishing Ukraine for its crimes, as Western states absolutely support the actions of the neo-Nazi regime. In the following days, Ukraine continued to bomb Belgorod and generate more victims. In response, Russia tightened its actions, hitting several military, industrial and critical infrastructure targets in numerous Ukrainian cities, including Kharkov, Kiev and even Lvov. Among the targets, decision-making and logistics centers used in planning attacks against Belgorod were destroyed. So, undoubtedly, recent days have been marked by a military escalation that could be decisive regarding the future of the conflict.

The Ukrainian side is the one that suffers most from this type of escalatory situation. Unlike the Russians, who are only using a small percentage of their military potential, Ukraine does not have the capacity to continue fighting in the long term. Since 2022, Kiev has had great difficulty facing high-intensity frictions, constantly suffering heavy losses. Especially after the failed “counteroffensive” attempt last year, the situation has further deteriorated, with the neo-Nazi regime collapsing militarily.In military sciences, terrorism is seen as a type of tactic used by belligerent agents incapable of facing a regular war situation. This explains why Kiev is committed to increasing terrorist attacks and generating more and more civilian victims. The attacks on Belgorod and other Russian demilitarized zones clearly show how close the Ukrainian regime is to definitive defeat, having collapsed militarily and being unable to reach any target other than innocent and unarmed civilians.

It would be wrong to say that this phenomenon is something recent. Terrorism has always been a common practice for the Ukrainian military. Although the Western media says otherwise, in fact, Kiev has always been at a disadvantage in direct conflict, not being able to face hostilities in accordance with international standards of humanitarian law. This is why Ukrainian intelligence and armed forces carried out terrorist maneuvers against Russian public figures and targeted non-military infrastructure such as the Kakhovka dam and the Crimean Bridge.However, the use of these criminal practices tends to become more and more frequent from now on, as Kiev is facing a situation of absolute military ruin. The so-called “counteroffensive” was the neo-Nazi regime’s main bet in 2023 and created great expectations in Western public opinion about a possible “game change” in the military scenario of the conflict. Western propagandists even commented that Kiev would “retake” the regions liberated by Russian forces – including Crimea.

But none of these expectations came true. Russian forces were efficient in protecting their defense lines and preventing any Ukrainian territorial advance. As admitted by Russian authorities, Moscow’s main goal in 2023 was to neutralize the Ukrainian counteroffensive and this objective was evidently achieved successfully. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians died in the fighting, mainly due to the heavy use of artillery by the Russians. Kiev’s death numbers exceeded half a million soldiers, in addition to massive losses of military equipment, leading the regime to collapse and strategic paralysis.

Just admit you lost and move on.

• Brussels Eyeing ‘Plan B’ To Finance Ukraine (RT)

The EU is considering alternative ways to keep funding Ukraine, in case member states fail to bypass a veto by Hungary, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said. Budapest earlier blocked a €50 billion ($55 billion) assistance package for Kiev amid the conflict with Russia. Speaking at a press conference with Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo on Friday, von der Leyen stressed that the EU must “urgently move forward on stabilizing our financial aid” to Ukraine. Reaching a consensus between all 27 member states is the “first priority… But of course we must prepare for other options. These are operational solutions that we are preparing right now,” she said, without giving details.

Von der Leyen recalled that just before Christmas, the EU adopted an €18 billion ($20 billion) support package for Kiev, to help “Ukraine finance their needs for the beginning of this year” and give Brussels some leeway when negotiating the main funding package. “But of course we have to work as hard and as fast as possible to deliver,” the top official added. Last month, Hungary – which has been consistently critical of the EU’s policy on Ukraine – blocked a €50 billion aid package for Kiev, to be disbursed between 2024 and 2027. Balazs Orban, an adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has said Budapest could drop its opposition to the effort if Brussels unblocks all of the €30 billion earmarked for Hungary – which were withheld over a perceived crackdown on democracy. The EU has so far unfrozen only one third of the sum, citing Budapest’s progress on judicial reforms.

The Financial Times reported late last month that the EU was working on a mechanism to bypass the Hungarian veto, that would see member states provide guarantees to the EU budget, thereby allowing Brussels to borrow some €20 billion for Kiev. An EU special summit on funding Ukraine will take place on February 1. Since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, the EU has provided Ukraine with more than $91 billion in various forms of aid. Russia has repeatedly denounced arms shipments to Kiev, while warning that continued support is becoming a serious burden for EU taxpayers.

Nobody was going to.

• Musk Warns Against Invading Russia (RT)

Never invade Russia, tech billionaire Elon Musk has insisted during a discussion of military strategies over the past few centuries on his platform, X (formerly Twitter). In a post on Thursday, Musk argued that 18th and early 19th-century British naval commander Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was “incredible.” He also praised Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington, who was among the military leaders who defeated French Emperor Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. “Wellington is usually underrated. Not on Napoleon’s level, but still one of the best generals in history imo,” SpaceX and Tesla CEO wrote. In response to his comment, one of the users suggested that Napoleon was actually “not so smart” when he launched his failed Russian campaign in 1812.

Musk seemingly agreed with the notion, replying: “Just don’t invade Russia. It’s never a good idea.” The French Army, considered unbeatable at the time, crossed into Russian territory in late June 1812 and advanced quickly, entering Moscow by mid-September. However, after that, Napoleon’s forces could only retreat, being kicked out of Russia by the end of the year and suffering estimated losses of between 400,000 and 500,000. Russian historians attribute the country’s success in what they call the Patriotic War of 1812 to the sophisticated bait-and-switch strategies of Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, the heroism of Russian troops, the patriotism of the civilian population, many of whom joined the partisans, and the harsh winter conditions in the final months of the conflict.

Over the past two years, Musk has been calling for a peaceful settlement of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, warning that due to the West backing Ukraine, the conflict could well spiral into a nuclear war between Russia and the US. The billionaire has been providing the Kiev forces with access to Starlink satellite internet but refused to enable the service in the vicinity of Crimea over concerns that the Ukrainians would use SpaceX’s system to guide drones and missiles toward Russian targets on the peninsula.

“..they have heard enough from those forced out because of refusal to take the death vaccine to know that the officers no longer stand up for the troops..”

• Recruitment Problems Plague US Military (Paul Craig Roberts)

Traditionally a few Southern states have provided the backbone of America’s military. But times have changed. Today white Southern men don’t like black female sergeants in their face. They don’t like homosexual sergeants in their face either. They don’t like comments from non-military friends about their officers wearing high heels and skirts. And they have heard enough from those forced out because of refusal to take the death vaccine to know that the officers no longer stand up for the troops. A military headed by a black Secretary of Defense, a female Deputy Secretary of Defense, a black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a female Chief of Naval Operations, a female Secretary of the Army, a Hispanic Secretary of the Navy, and a black head of the US Air Force Academy comes across as a military hostile to “racist, misogynist heterosexual white males.” These officials might all be competent, but they don’t come across to those in the ranks as warriors loyal to the troops.

The black Secretary of Defense reinforced this impression when he announced that promotions for whites were on hold because there are too many white officers. In other words, the military is no longer merit-based. It is a racial and gender quota system. Men with a temperament to be warriors want to be led by warriors, not by quota hires. They want to feel that they are part of a fighting force led by officers proven in combat. Their image of a military leader is George Patton or Robert E. Lee. The demonization of white people that permeates American society has now infected the military. Traditional military families now discourage sons from joining the US military. If the pro-Israeli neoconservative warmongers remain in control of US foreign policy, the likely consequence will be that Washington will make a deal with immigrant-invaders of trading citizenship for military service. This appears to be the road that the woke US military has us on. Just as Romans ended up ruled by their German mercenaries, Americans will be ruled by immigrant-invaders.

“Comer and Jordan requested the White House provide information about Mr. Biden’s alleged involvement in his son’s defiance of the congressional subpoena. They gave the White House until Wednesday to turn over documents regarding Hunter Biden’s scheduled deposition.”

• House GOP To Move Toward Holding Hunter Biden In Contempt Of Congress (CBS)

House Republicans said Friday that they will move forward next week with an effort to hold Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, in contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena for closed-door testimony. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer announced that on Wednesday, his panel will consider a resolution and accompanying report to penalize Hunter Biden for his defiance of the subpoena. If the Oversight panel advances the contempt resolution, it would then require approval by the full House. The Oversight and Judiciary Committees demanded the president’s son appear for a private deposition on Dec. 13, which he declined to do. Instead, Hunter Biden delivered a brief statement to reporters outside the U.S. Capitol, in which he reiterated that he would only answer lawmakers’ questions in a public setting.

He accused Republicans of “distorting the facts” and selectively releasing information from prior closed-door interviews with others appearing before House committees. Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said in a statement Friday that Hunter Biden’s refusal to comply with their subpoenas for testimony constitutes contempt of Congress and warrants referral to federal prosecutors. “We will not provide him with special treatment because of his last name,” Comer, of Kentucky, and Jordan, of Ohio, said. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, denounced Comer’s decision to hold a vote on the contempt resolution, saying there is no precedent for the House holding a private citizen who has offered to testify publicly in contempt of Congress.

“Chairman Comer does not want Hunter Biden to testify in public, just as he has refused to publicly release over a dozen interview transcripts, because he wants to keep up the carefully curated distortions, blatant lies, and laughable conspiracy theories that have marked this investigation,” he said in a statement. “However, the facts and the evidence all show no wrongdoing and no impeachable offense by President Biden.” Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, criticized House GOP lawmakers in a statement to CBS News. “It’s clear the Republican Chairmen aren’t interested in getting the facts or they would allow Hunter to testify publicly. Instead, House Republicans continue to play politics by seeking an unprecedented contempt motion against someone who has from the first request offered to answer all their proper questions,” he said. “What are they afraid of?”

GOP lawmakers have been investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings for nearly a year and have accused Mr. Biden of profiting from his son and brother’s overseas work. But the Republicans have not produced any evidence of wrongdoing by the president or that he benefited from his family’s foreign business ventures. Still, the GOP-led House voted along party lines last month to formalize an impeachment inquiry into the president. As part of their probe, led by the Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means panels, Comer and Jordan requested the White House provide information about Mr. Biden’s alleged involvement in his son’s defiance of the congressional subpoena. They gave the White House until Wednesday to turn over documents regarding Hunter Biden’s scheduled deposition.

“It is doubtful that anyone in New York seriously believes that they can force bus or airline companies to pay for migrants coming to a self-proclaimed sanctuary city..”

• New York To Sue Bus Companies … For Busing People (Turley)

New York City Major Eric Adams announced on Thursday that he is suing bus companies for over $700 million for busing undocumented persons to the state. This is truly a thing to behold. It is a frivolous lawsuit based on an absurd law motivated by raw hypocrisy. In the meantime, the Biden Administration has been flying migrants to outside the city but no lawsuit is expected. New York City politicians have long heralded their status as a sanctuary city. Yet, it is now taking various methods to prevent migrants from seeking sanctuary by threatening anyone who brings them to the city. The lawsuit will rely on New York Social Services Law § 149, which requires that “[a]ny person who knowingly brings, or causes to be brought, a needy person from out of state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge…shall be obligated to convey such person out of state or support him at his own expense.”

Of course, these companies are not transporting people to make them a public charge. They are transporting these people because they or a third party paid the fare for transport. That statute expressly allows the commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Services (DSS) to sue to recover costs. In seeking to impose crippling fines and damages on transportation companies, the lawsuit will likely be challenged as unconstitutional due to its vagueness, curtailment of interstate travel, and a host of other glaring problems. This is clearly an effort to grind companies financially. It is doubtful that anyone in New York seriously believes that they can force bus or airline companies to pay for migrants coming to a self-proclaimed sanctuary city. It is a cynical effort to impose litigation costs on companies to get them to refuse to accept such contracts.

Yet, how is a company supposed to determine if someone purchasing a ticket is a potential “public charge.” Does that apply to anyone who is impoverished? What proof of support is needed from the passenger? Such inquiries could themselves violate legal and constitutional protections. Transportation companies sell seats for transport. They are not responsible for those who purchase the tickets for their ultimate support. They are not responsible for the costs that a traveler may impose on a given city. If that were the case, I would sue the airlines everytime they fly the Packers to Chicago to play football. (Now that I think about it ….hmmm)

Can you spell Bidenomics?

“..the print for implied full-time job creation/destruction comes to -1.479M.”

“They will tell you that this was a strong report even though they are not stupid. They hope you are.”

• The Month That Labor Markets Fell Apart (Street)

On the surface, the BLS report of December labor markets appears somewhat strong. The keyword reading algorithms that skim the headlines acted in a microsecond. Bonds were hit, as yields went “pop.” Equity index futures reacted accordingly and put a momentary bottom in. The tough part of this report will be to determine just how positive, or negative December was. I’ll give you a clue as to what I think. I think December was tragic and may have been the first hint of something awful to come. I hope for your sake and for mine that I am overreacting. Okay, understanding that the BLS ends up significantly revising everything because their methods are antiquated and have been insufficient for the purposes of data collection for years, we’ll go with the numbers. The fact shall likely forever remain clouded in mystery.

As anyone reading this piece already knows, the Bureau of Labor Markets, which is part of the Department of Labor, posted the results of its twin December Labor Market surveys on Friday morning. The Establishment Survey of “Table B”, which is the more superficial of the two and of course the one that the financial media focuses on, showed an increase of Non-Farm Payrolls of 216K. Wall Street was looking for about 160K, I was looking for 164K. The BLS also revised November’s NFP print from 199K down to 173K and October’s NFP print from 150K down to 105K, leaving the December NFP print not at 216K, but at net growth of 145K from where we thought we were. 145K obviously falls short of consensus view. It gets worse from there. The Household Survey of “Table A” showed a decrease of 683K persons and another 676K individuals that became “discouraged” and left the labor force.

Conveniently, these 676K individuals can be left out of the math, so that the unemployment rate can stay put. So, understand this. The BLS Establishment Survey shows net job creation of 145K, while the BLS Household Survey shows job destruction of 683K at a time of year when everyone and their brother is trying to hire temporary employees. It still gets worse from there. As the exodus of the discouraged left the labor force en masse, the participation rate dropped from 62.8% to 62.5% (that’s a huge drop) as the employment to population ratio dropped from 60.4% to 60.1%. Part-time work? Glad you asked, as this is part of the Household Survey. Part-Time jobs increased by a whopping 796K positions, even as 683K positions were eliminated. Hence, and this is a doozy, the print for implied full-time job creation/destruction comes to -1.479M.

That’s right. They will tell you that this was a strong report even though they are not stupid. They hope you are. “They” know darn well that the US economy lost 1.479M full-time jobs in December. That’s tragic. This large reduction in the ranks of those employed and the ranks of those downshifted from full-time to part-time left the unemployment rate at 3.7% and took the Underemployment Rate up from 7% to 7.1%. Do you realize how hard it is for these rates to not move lower and do so significantly when 0.4% of the entire labor force has “disappeared.”

Tucker vaxx

Tucker Carlson: Fundamentally everything they said was wrong about the vax and it's hut a lot of people…but there are tens of thousands of doctors in the United States and where are they all standing up and saying: "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I cannot believe I recommended…"…… pic.twitter.com/rXGrGm9um9

— Camus (@newstart_2024) January 5, 2024

Ep. 60 Is the lesson of the Covid disaster that we should give its architects more power? Bret Weinstein on the WHO’s plans for you. pic.twitter.com/ku3O5BdeoF

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) January 5, 2024

93 candles today for one of Cinema’s finest Actors for over six decades – the Oscar winning ROBERT DUVALL.

Amos Miller

State troopers raided Amos Miller's organic farm in Pennsylvania today.

The farm specializes in selling raw milk, organic eggs, grass-fed beef and other nutritious foods to private buyers.
pic.twitter.com/Un6LQc6Ztz

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 5, 2024

Mouse deer like chevrotains and Java mouse deer are considered living fossils because they are thought to be the most primitive ruminants. Whales may have evolved from water-loving creatures that looked like small deer

Puppy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1743326217057517794

Creme Puff (August 3, 1967 – August 6, 2005) was the oldest cat ever recorded, according to the 2010 edition of Guinness World Records, when she died aged 38 years and 3 days.

Ice potassium

The unexpected reaction of ice and potassium
pic.twitter.com/AIkKzchJDn

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 5, 2024

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle June 24 2023

Jun 242023

June 24, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:24 am Finance Tagged with: armistice, counteroffensive, Lindsey Graham, nuclear strike, Prigozhin, Rostov, suicidal, treason, Wagner, Zelensky 36 Responses »

Johannes Vermeer The girl with the wine glass (Dame en twee heren) 1659

• Prigozhin Charged With Armed Mutiny, To Face Up To 20 Years In Prison (TASS)

• Russian MoD Denies Media Reports of Strikes on Wagner Positions (Sp.)

• Russian Army Retreating In Ukraine, Putin Being Deceived – Prigozhin (Az.)

• Prigozhin Says Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Unjustified (MT)

• Zelensky May ‘Sacrifice All Of Europe’ – Russian Envoy (RT)

• Russian UN Ambassador Says Ukrainian Counteroffensive ‘Suicidal’ (TASS)

• West in Denial About Failure of Ukrainian ‘Counter-Offensive’ (Tweedie)

• The Counteroffensive Had No Chance. NATO Failed To Explain That (MoA)

• Analysis Ukrainian Counteroffensive Part 2 June 23 (Valtersson)

• Why an Armistice Offers the Best Hope for Peace in Ukraine (Foreign Affairs)

• Envoy Slams US Senators’ ‘Absurd’ Claims About Nuclear Strike on Ukraine (Sp.)

• The PRC’s Rise Is A Failure Of American Presidential Leadership (Thayer)

• Cash-Strapped Europe Still Paying to Arm Ukraine for Proxy Conflict (Tweedie)

• Teachable Moment (Jim Kunstler)

Here's President Putin's full speech, translated, denouncing Wagner / Prigozhin's actions as treasonous and ordering the end to the military rebellion. pic.twitter.com/EgFtNIn6pR

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 24, 2023

This is not a counteroffensive, it’s a bloody crashtest.

Why NATO can’t beat Russia.

-Scott Ritter pic.twitter.com/zG0Uw45WxW

— Richard (@ricwe123) June 23, 2023

Pressure difference between a space capsule and the vacuum of space: Less than 1 atm.
Pressure difference between a submersible at the Titanic and the surrounding water pressure: Nearly 400 atm. (5,600 lbs per sq inch)

Así habría implosionado el submarino Ocean que bajaba al Titanic…

pic.twitter.com/pq77GzPYrq

— Arte y libros. (@Arteymas_) June 22, 2023

There will be no presidential elections in Ukraine until the end of the war – Zelensky

Lumumba

"The president of Ukraine is an actor. When I listen to (Zelensky), he still thinks he's acting, which is tragic because he is now acting but real people are dying. Ukraine has become a theater, where NATO is testing its weapons." — Kenyan Prof Lumumba pic.twitter.com/3V7f8UqzhZ

— sarah (@sahouraxo) June 23, 2023

Baerbock

"I put Ukraine first, no matter what my German voters think or how hard their life is"

Annalena Burbock, German Foreign Minister pic.twitter.com/2ws8euTrrw

— Sprinter (@Sprinter99880) June 23, 2023

Obama

Supporting Ukraine is "vital" for democracy, former President @BarackObama tells me. Russia's fullscale invasion "was a wakeup call to Europe… to the West and to democracies around the world, that the old ways of thinking, might makes right… those forces have to be confronted." pic.twitter.com/LHtuQB5LNf

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) June 23, 2023

Jean-Pierre

HOLY SMOKES: Reporters TURN on Karine Jean Pierre, gang up on her for 4 minutes straight asking about Joe Biden's connection to Hunter's overseas business dealings after bombshell text messages reveal criminal corruption scheme pic.twitter.com/GYUhEfq6jz

— Danny De Urbina (@dannydeurbina) June 23, 2023

Kirby

Newsmax's @JamesRosenTV reads the entire text Hunter Biden sent to a Chinese businessman which stated Joe Biden was "in the room" in an effort to get him to pay them.

Kirby refuses to answer and then walks away from the podium pic.twitter.com/MsstdH4dWH

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 23, 2023

It’s all true. Hunter, the laptop, the bribes, the foreign cash, the money laundering to his dad. The President of the United States is a crook and a traitor. The DOJ has known all of it for years. So they’re destroying Trump’s life to protect Biden.

Holy Shit! pic.twitter.com/GUtNFrYy8d

— Karli Bonne’ (@KarliBonnita) June 22, 2023

Strange things happened in the past 24 hours. Core: until now it was Prigozhin vs Shoigu and Gerasimov. Now it’s Prigozhin vs Putin. Or at least he doesn’t leave Putin a way out.

But Prigozhin has been part of PR schemes before -Bakhmut-, to lure Ukraine into thinking they could attack, only to get slaughtered.

• Prigozhin Charged With Armed Mutiny, To Face Up To 20 Years In Prison (TASS)

The Russian Defense Ministry called the reports on strikes at Wagner PMC units false. The Ministry added that Russian forces continue to carry out missions in the special military operation area. Later, the Ministry announced that the Kiev regime took advantage of Prigozhin’s provocation and is concentrating forces of 35th and 36th Marine Brigades on the Bakhmut direction for offensive action. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin was informed about the situation around Prigozhin and “necessary measures are being taken.” According to the spokesman, all Russian security agencies report to Putin about measures being taken around the clock.

The National Antiterrorism Committee announced that Prigozhin’s statements became grounds for initiation of the criminal case over charges of calls for an armed mutiny; the Committee demanded to immediately stop illegal actions. Later, the Prosecutor General’s Office said that the criminal case was initiated legitimately and was justified. The Office promised to provide legal assessment to Prigozhin’s actions. The Wagner PMC founder may face between 12 and 20 years in prison. Prigozhin’s statements effectively constitute calls for beginning of and armed civil conflict, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) press office said. “Prigozhin’s statements and actions effectively constitute calls for an armed civil conflict on Russian territory and a stab in the back of Russian servicemen fighting with pro-Nazi Ukrainian forces,” the press office said.

Russia’s Deputy Commander of Russian joint forces in the special military operation area Sergey Surovikin called on the Wagner PMC to comply with President Vladimir Putin’s order and to resolve all issues peacefully. “I urge you to stop. The enemy is waiting for our internal political situation to escalate. We must not play in enemy’s favor in this difficult time. Before it is too late, it is necessary to submit to the will and order to the nationally elected president of the Russian Federation, to stop the convoys, to take them back to their permanent deployment and concentration locations, and to only resolve all issues peacefully,” he said. Russia’s Channel 1 aired two special reports. The first said that the video about the “strike” on Wagner PMC positions is fake, proven by the absence of other video footage, and the fact that audio files on Prigozhin’s Telegram channel were recorded simultaneously and were published as scheduled messages. In addition, the report announced the initiation of the criminal case against Prigozhin.

Moscow’s critical facilities have been put under reinforced protection, security measures in the capital have been increased, a source in law enforcement agencies told TASS. According to the source, Russian National Guard special units were put on full alert. Car traffic has been blocked on Russia’s M-4 highway past Rostov-on-Don towards Aksay, according to TASS reported at the scene. All cars moving from Rostov-on-Don towards Aksay are being redirected back in the city, and police checkpoints have been reinforced. Checkpoints have been established near the Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, with military and law enforcement upholding the public order.

Military checkpoints have been established on streets adjacent to the headquarters, with numerous police cars; an armored personnel carrier was spotted near the headquarters building. The city’s central streets are being patrolled by police cars; aircraft was heard in air in Western parts of the city. No security agency has provided any official comments yet. Meanwhile, the situation at the “Wagner PMC Center” building in St. Petersburg remains calm, there are no Russian National Guard employees or employees of other security services, according to a TASS reporter. Security detail on duty debunked reports of searches in the building. Crimean authorities urged residents to only trust official information due to intensified activities of Ukraine’s Informational and Psychological Operation Center (TSIPsO).

The whole thing was started based on a bunch of videos?

• Russian MoD Denies Media Reports of Strikes on Wagner Positions (Sp.)

Earlier, videos surfaced on social media attributed to the Wagner private military contractor accusing the Russian military of hitting a Wagner camp in rear areas. The MoD has characterized these videos as a “media provocation.” Reports about Russian military strikes on Wagner rear area camps are not true, Russia’s Defense Ministry has said. “All the messages and videos distributed on social networks on behalf of [Wagner Head Yevgeny] Prigozhin about alleged ‘strike by Russian Defense Ministry on the rear camps of the Wagner PMC do not correspond to reality and are an informational provocation,” the ministry said in a statement posted to its Telegram page Friday. “The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue to carry out combat missions on the line of contact with the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of the special military operation,” it added.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that President Putin has been “informed of all events around Prigozhin,” and said that “necessary measures are being taken.” The press secretary did not elaborate. Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had opened a criminal case over “calling for an armed rebellion,” and that allegations spread on behalf of Wagner chief Prigozhin were “unfounded.” “In connection with these statements, the FSB has opened a criminal case over calls for an armed rebellion. We demand that these illegal actions be stopped immediately,” the committee said. Earlier in the day, footage and audio attributed to Wagner troops and Prigozhin surfaced online alleging that a “missile attack” had been launched at a Wagner camp, and that the strike was “delivered from the rear, that is by forces of the Russian Defense Ministry.”

The voice attributed to Prigozhin appeared to call for the ouster of the Defense Ministry’s leadership. The footage and audio were immediately jumped on by Ukrainian and US state-funded media outlets, which have been reporting heavily on Prigozhin’s criticism of Russian generals in recent weeks. Wagner units and Russian Army forces jointly took part in the battle of Artemovsk (Bakhmut), liberating the Donbass city in late May after eight months of heavy fighting which pinned down large concentrations of Ukrainian troops, allowed Russia to train up its mobilized reserves, and resulted in a major defeat for Kiev ahead of its now-stalled counteroffensive.

From yesterday, before the “coup attempt”. Prigozhin says Russia is losing. Got me thinking, because that’s something not even the most pro-Ukraine western MSM reports.

• Russian Army Retreating In Ukraine, Putin Being Deceived – Prigozhin (Az.)

Russian troops are retreating along the front line in Ukraine – in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, while the Russian Defense Ministry and the Russian General Staff are talking about a possible victory and are providing false information to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Head of Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin said, Report informs referring to Russian media. He noted that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are actively neutralizing the Russian army, adding that the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff ‘still hope that they can win this war’ and ‘thoroughly deceive the president.’

In his video, Prigozhin shared his vision of the events taking place in Ukraine. In particular, the founder of PMC Wagner said that by February 24, 2022, the situation in Donbass was no different from what had been happening there since 2014. Ukraine was not going to attack Russia together with NATO. The Ministry of Defense, speaking about the upcoming Ukrainian offensive, deceived both the public and the President of Russia, Prigozhin claims. The war was needed only so that a ‘bunch’ of people simply ‘triumphed and promoted,’ as well as the oligarchs who profit from it, Prigozhin noted.

Also from yesterday, and also a strange statement.

• Prigozhin Says Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Unjustified (MT)

Russia did not face an imminent security threat to justify its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary outfit, said in a bombshell video posted on social media Friday. “The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with the NATO bloc,” Prigozhin explained in the half-hour tirade released by his press service. “The Russian Defense Ministry is deceiving the public and the president,” he added. Prigozhin’s comments were at odds with the casus belli given by President Vladimir Putin when he ordered troops into Ukraine last February, although the private army chief avoided personally attacking the Russian leader. Putin has cited NATO expansion near Russia’s borders as one of the main justifications for invading neighboring Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Prigozhin escalated his criticism of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu by claiming that Russia went to war “for the self-promotion of a bunch of bastards.” He blamed Russia’s military leadership for “poorly planning” the invasion and “embarrassing” the military after a series of setbacks on the battlefield last year. “Shoigu killed thousands of the most combat-ready Russian soldiers in the first days of the war,” he charged. “The mentally ill scumbags decided ‘It’s okay, we’ll throw in a few thousand more Russian men as ‘cannon fodder.’ ‘They’ll die under artillery fire, but we’ll get what we want’,” Prigozhin continued. “That’s why it has become a protracted war.”

Prigozhin also accused Kremlin-linked oligarchs of seeking to plunder Ukraine’s resources after its military capture and appointment of a puppet regime in Kyiv. “The task was to divide material assets in Ukraine. There was widespread theft in the [industrial eastern Ukrainian territory of the] Donbas, but they wanted more.” Some analysts have interpreted Prigozhin’s latest comments as a sign of his growing political ambitions. He addressed the Ukrainian forces’ ongoing counteroffensive in similarly critical terms, saying the Russian army is retreating from the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. “We are washing ourselves in blood. No one is bringing reserves. What they tell us is the deepest deception,” Prigozhin said, referring to Putin and Shoigu’s claims that Russia is successfully pushing back Ukrainian counterattacks.

“Mikhail Podoliak, a senior aide to Zelensky, blamed the offensive’s failure on the West’s apparent hesitance to give Kiev all of the heavy weapons it asked for..”

• Zelensky May ‘Sacrifice All Of Europe’ – Russian Envoy (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky could stage a false-flag attack at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in order to provoke NATO intervention, Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, warned on Friday. Polyanskiy said on Twitter that Russia had “just drawn attention to these plans of [the] Kiev regime during the UN Security Council meeting” that morning. “The whole of Europe may be easily sacrificed by Ze and his blind Russophobic sponsors,” he added. “Don’t tell us we didn’t warn you!” Zelensky’s “plan” – according to some pro-Russian commentators – would involve causing a nuclear accident at the ZNPP facility, which has been under Russian control since the early days of the special military operation in Ukraine. According to this theory, Kiev would then blame the ensuing disaster on Russia, leading NATO to openly declare war on Russia in response.

This exact scenario was mapped out by US Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal on Thursday. The two lawmakers proposed a resolution under which the US would consider a meltdown at the plant as an act of war against NATO, due to the fact that Poland would be affected by radioactive fallout. Russia’s ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Antonov, cautioned that the “crazy” resolution could be laying the groundwork for such a false-flag incident. Zelensky claimed on Thursday that Russia is preparing a “terrorist act” at the ZNPP, adding that “radiation knows no borders” and “who it hits” will depend on the “direction of the wind.” Russia has repeatedly accused Ukraine of shelling the ZNPP, with Moscow’s permanent ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, demanding on multiple occasions that the UN Security Council order Kiev to cease firing on the plant. Ukrainian forces also made several attempts to retake the plant by crossing the Dnieper River last year, and allegedly attacked it with explosives-laden drones on Friday morning.

“Ukraine blew up the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric power station in order to distract the world from the failures of their much-publicized counteroffensive,” Zaporozhye authorities said in a statement. “Now they need another disaster, this time a nuclear one, for which they will again blame Russia.” Launched at the beginning of this month, Ukraine’s counteroffensive has cost Kiev 13,000 troops so far, without netting any significant territorial gains, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. With American and Western officials reportedly displeased, Mikhail Podoliak, a senior aide to Zelensky, blamed the offensive’s failure on the West’s apparent hesitance to give Kiev all of the heavy weapons it asked for in recent months.

“..obsessed with this notorious counterattack, set little store on the interests of their people and the future of their country..”

• Russian UN Ambassador Says Ukrainian Counteroffensive ‘Suicidal’ (TASS)

The counteroffensive from Ukraine’s armed forces is fully self-destructive, set in motion with complete disregard for the interests of the Ukrainian people, Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday. “Ukraine’s armed forces have been conducting a suicidal counteroffensive against Russian positions for almost a month now; it has already cost them tens of thousands of mobilized men, several hundred pieces of armored hardware, and it is called in Ukrainian society none other than the Zaporozhye slaughter,” Nebenzya said. “As was the case with the Bakhmut slaughter, where the Kiev regime sent Ukrainian soldiers to their deaths for several months just to prove to Western arms suppliers that Ukraine could defeat Russia.

Of course, they only succeeded in proving the opposite, which [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky and his clique are trying to forget today.” “Now they face a bigger task: how to make a victory out of a complete fiasco and defeat. Toiling on this task together with them are Washington, London and Brussels, who never think about Ukraine as such and its interests,” the UN ambassador went on to say.

“Against the background of what is going on, it is even more evident today that they are interested in this country only as an instrument to weaken or at least restrain Russia. That is why they will not let the puppet regime in Kiev have any peace talks, at least as long as there are still some Ukrainians left. The same way they didn’t allow it to be done in March last year, as Russian President Vladimir Putin explained in detail at a meeting with African leaders,” Nebenzya said. “It is obvious that those in Kiev, who are behind this terrorist attack (Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant blast – TASS), obsessed with this notorious counterattack, set little store on the interests of their people and the future of their country,” the diplomat stressed.

“..Russia called up 300,000 reservists on top of the 150,000 force that they went into Ukraine with..”

• West in Denial About Failure of Ukrainian ‘Counter-Offensive’ (Tweedie)

Former CIA director and US Central Command chief General David Petraeus predicted on June 6, two days into Kiev’s southern offensive, that “the Russians will prove to be more brittle than the expectation is” when faced with Western-supplied armour, also claiming that Moscow’s troops were poorly trained, equipped and led and exhausted after a year on the front line without a break. Since then, the Russian army’s Vostok (East) battlegroup has destroyed at least 246 Ukrainian tanks, including 13 NATO models including the vaunted Leopard 2s, along with more than 440 other armoured vehicles, while the Ukrainian forces have suffered some 13,000 casualties Military analyst Mark Sleboda told Sputnik that Petraeus’ statements were “blatantly false.”

“First of all, Russia called up 300,000 reservists on top of the 150,000 force that they went into Ukraine with,” he pointed out. “These are all people who had prior experience in the military, and then they received over eight months of training since they were called up on top of this.” He also attacked the Western view of the conflict as akin to a heroic war film. “Some people believe this is a Hollywood movie and expect results,” Sleboda noted. “No it’s not. Why would we think that this is a Hollywood movie?” “We had videos of this Kiev regime information war, which they have always prioritized over the real war,” Sleboda underscored. “We had a number of Ukrainian military flashing through them, showing them all shushing us into silence, assuring us that there is a plan for the counteroffensive.”

That was followed by an “obvious deepfake video” of Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, believed hit by a Russian missile strike on his Kiev headquarters on May 29, “staring into the camera for a interminable period of time, blinking oddly at these intervals.” The military analyst predicted that once the Ukrainian offensive runs out of steam, Russia will mount a counter-offensive in the “proper use of the term.” “But it probably will not look like a big arrow sweeping Hollywood style offensive, like we’ve been expected to believe,” Sleboda said. “I expect it will be more of the same focused on liberating the last these fortress strongholds in the Donbass.”

“There won’t be a big tank blitzkrieg, riding on the minefields, because we’ve seen how well they work for Kiev,” the security expert stressed. “It will be doing what works for them, which is the slow grind of artillery and air power from above.” The analyst argued that Russia was much better prepared for a protracted conflict than the Kiev regime and its Western masters. “Putin is definitely sending signals that Russia considers that it is in this conflict for the long term,” Sleboda said, but the US and NATO as a whole “are running low on the stockpiles of many items that are essential for the Kiev regime to continue the conflict, like artillery shells.”

“‘Western’ equipment is more complex than Soviet era stuff. It also requires more specialized maintenance. The Ukraine received a zoo.”

• The Counteroffensive Had No Chance. NATO Failed To Explain That (MoA)

At the end of 2022 the Ukrainian army had been exhausted and had been already been destroyed twice. The Russians had first destroyed large parts of the original equipment of the Ukrainian army and then the Soviet era equipment that was brought to Ukraine from former Warsaw Pact nations. More importantly they had killed or wounded many of the experienced non-commissioned staff (Sergeants etc) and lower rank officers of the Ukrainian military that command and are the core of each company. The newly mobilized Ukrainian forces did not have the knowledge or training necessary to replace them. ‘Western’ equipment is more complex than Soviet era stuff. It also requires more specialized maintenance. The Ukraine received a zoo.

The many types of equipment and the many incompatible kinds of ammunition they use are a logistic nightmare. ‘Western’ training for the mobilized Ukrainian forces did not bring up more capable soldiers than Soviet training would have done. Those who watched NATO stumble in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya should have recognized that. Russian on the other side mobilized 300,000 soldiers who mostly had been contract soldiers before they had returned to private life. They received extensive refresher training. They now mostly get paid more than in their civilian life which certainly helped to increase their motivation. Russia also changed the structure of its military. The main Russian fighting force in 2022 was made up of Brigade Tactical Groups (BIG). Each of them was part of a garrison brigade which next to the one contract soldier BTG had additional battalions that were mostly training conscripts. Under Russian laws the conscript battalions could not be used on foreign ground.

The fighting BTG’s had few real infantry soldiers. Next to their 9 infantry platoons they had 8 artillery and 5 auxiliary platoons. Of a total of some 800 plus soldiers in a BTG only 200 were actually infantry that could man the trenches. The whole structure was too big and too difficult to command. After the mobilization had brought up enough men the Russian military changed from BTGs to a mobile brigade structure. Under a higher commander the brigade holds two or three battalions that each consist of three or four companies of mobile infantry or tanks. Most of the artillery and auxiliary troops of the former BTGs are now concentrated under the brigade structure and can be used more flexible wherever they are needed. The tooth to tail ratio in the frontline battalions is now much higher than in a BTG and the whole structure is easier to command.

Twitter thread by @MikaelValterss1

• Analysis Ukrainian Counteroffensive Part 2 June 23 (Valtersson)

Some asks how I can say that the Ukrainian counteroffensive already is a failure. Many Ukrainian units haven’t seen combat yet, so things could change. The easy answer is that it’s hard to make up for early losses. UkrAF has 40-50 good field brigades, usable for offensive purposes. A problem is that many soldiers are raw and have had to short training, but the brigades also has many battle hardened veterans and good weaponry. Half of these are on the Southern front and half on the Eastern front. Earlier a large part of them used to be a strategic reserve. On the Southern front about a third of the units has seen combat and maybe two thirds on the Eastern front. All in all, half of the brigades has seen combat recently. Half a dozen of the brigades has been rotated away. Probably due to high losses. That’s mean that 12-15 percent of the Ukrainian Field Army is used up since the beginning of June.

On the Eastern front there are a lack of fresh Ukrainian units and the possibility of major Ukrainian counteroffensives are limited. Some believe that Ukraine prepares for a large scale offensive e near Kreminna, but I think that’s unlikely, even though a large number of Ukrainian brigades are stationed there. But many of these are made up of fresh recruits with limited training and no heavy equipment. The better brigades are in the second line. This positioning of units are probably to defend against a Russian offensive, with the good brigades as counterattack units. On the Southern front, Ukrainian forces probably are in a quandary about what to do. Abandoning the Counteroffensive and save unit or gamble everything on success.

The original plan was probably to attack in the west and east with strong forces (blue arrows), making so large breakthroughs that Russian reserves would be moved there (red arrows) and leaving the Centre exposed. The second attack would come in the centre (purple arrow) with the aim of breaking through to the Russian rear and move towards Berdyansk (1). If Russian reserves turned around and attacked the Ukrainians I the Centre (yellow arrows), Ukrainian reserve units could move eastwardsand, help breaking through south of Vreminka salient (green arrow) and move towards Mariupol (2). I don’t think the attacks in the west towards Tokmak (4) and Melitopol (3) was the main push, since there are many strong defencelines to fight through to get there.

In the Centre and south of Vreminka salient the Russian defences are much thinner and easier to break through. Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, Russian units, air power, artillery, mine fields etc was much stronger than expected. So there was no need to move around reserves to handle Ukrainian breakthroughs. Instead the Ukrainian avant-garde brigades got severely mauled by Russian forces. Now the UkrAF are clerly weakened after dozens of attacks against the Russian forward positions,not even getting to the real russian fortifications. If things continue like this the coming 19 days 25-30 percent of the assault brigades in the south will be spent and all reserves used up on the Eastern front. Even if there are some territorial gains, larger than the first 19 days, the brigades left, probably aren’t strong enough to achieve a breakthrough of the Russian main defencelines and if they could do that, there wouldn’t be much left to continue advancing.

Especially with Russian strategic reserves arriving on the Southern front. The offensive isn’t over and it might continue during the summer. But if it does Ukraine might have spent most of their offensive power to do nothing in the South, all the while RuAF might have used Ukrainian preoccupation with Zaporizhia and South Donetsk to make own breakthroughs in the East and North. Breakthroughs hard to contain if Ukraine spends its offensive power running into a wall in the South. Abort the Counteroffensive and save the reserve to counter russian offensives.

Jim Rickards: “Foreign Affairs is the voice of the globalists. Last year they discussed a Ukrainian victory and the end of Putin. Today, it’s a stalemate and armistice. Next year it will be Ukrainian terms of surrender. They just don’t get it. Russia is a superpower.”

• Why an Armistice Offers the Best Hope for Peace in Ukraine (Foreign Affairs)

Today, the Korean Peninsula remains a site of high geopolitical tension. North Korea is governed by a dictator who brutally represses his citizens and regularly threatens his neighbors with nuclear weapons. But the carnage of the Korean War is now a distant memory, and the peace produced by the armistice allowed South Korea to develop a robust economy and, eventually, a stable liberal democracy. For all its flaws, the armistice was a success. The war ravaging Ukraine today bears more than a passing resemblance to the Korean War. And for anyone wondering about how it might end, the durability of the Korean armistice—and the high human cost of the delay in reaching it—deserves close study. The parallels are clear.

In Ukraine, as in Korea seven decades ago, a static battlefront and intractable political differences call for a cease-fire that would pause the violence while putting off thorny political issues for another day. The Korean armistice “enabled South Korea to flourish under American security guarantees and protection,” the historian Stephen Kotkin has pointed out. “If a similar armistice allowed Ukraine—or even just 80 percent of the country—to flourish in a similar way,” he argues, “that would be a victory in the war.” The negotiations that produced the Korean armistice were long and difficult and took place alongside heavy fighting, before the war’s costs were clear enough to persuade either side to compromise. The same would likely be true today.

The Korean experience also suggests that the obstinacy of Russian President Vladimir Putin—who, like Stalin, seems averse to compromise of any kind—could be especially obstructive. On top of that, domestic politics in the United States and the gap between Washington’s and Kyiv’s legitimate but distinct interests could trip up a cease-fire. At the moment, debate in Washington often focuses on the question of when would be the right time to start pushing Ukraine to negotiate, and the consensus answer has generally been, “Not yet.” The Korean War shows that, in a military stalemate, it can take a very long time for both sides to clearly see that the costs of continuing to fight are outweighing the benefits. And by the time they do, a great deal of death and destruction can occur without producing any meaningful advantages.

If the United States, NATO, and other supporters of Ukraine do decide to work toward a cease-fire, the end of the Korean War offers three practical lessons. First, they must be willing to fight and talk simultaneously, using battlefield pressure to enforce demands at the negotiating table. Second, they should include the United Nations in any negotiations, since neutral arbiters are an asset. Finally, they should condition future security assistance and postconflict support for Ukraine on Kyiv’s willingness to make some concessions. A complete victory for Ukraine and the West and a total defeat for the other side would be a welcome end to the Ukraine war, just as it would have been in Korea. And as in Korea, the risk of escalation confounds such an outcome. Kyiv, Washington, and their partners in opposing Moscow’s aggression should understand that an armistice that both Ukraine and Russia can accept—even if it fails to settle all the important questions—would still be a win.

A nuke attack would activate Article 5. So you fake one.

• Envoy Slams US Senators’ ‘Absurd’ Claims About Nuclear Strike on Ukraine (Sp.)

Earlier, US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the lawmakers were introducing a resolution to consider the use of a nuclear weapon by Russia in Ukraine as an attack on the NATO alliance. US senators’ speculations about the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine are absurd and contribute to the escalation of tensions, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said on Thursday.”Speculations about Russia’s possible use of tactical nuclear weapons are absurd. The provocative and short-sighted rhetoric of US lawmakers only contributes to the escalation of tensions and increases the risk of the situation sliding to an even more dangerous line,” Antonov said in a statement shared among media.

Antonov slammed the resolution as another “crazy initiative” of “Russophobe senators” in the US. Russia’s deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus was done on legal grounds, the ambassador noted. “We have not violated a single international obligation and have done exactly what the Americans have been doing for decades, deploying nuclear bombs on the territories of European allies,” Antonov said.The ambassador suggested that these speculations serve to prepare the world community for a false-flag provocation at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant by sliding a “dirty bomb” there and blaming it on Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in mid-June that Russia had transferred the first part of the nuclear warheads to Belarus and would complete the task of moving tactical nuclear weapons completely by the end of the year. Putin said the deployment was an element of deterrence and a signal to those thinking about inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service head Sergey Naryshkin said earlier in June that Kiev could continue to work on the creation of a “dirty bomb,” adding that the possible use of the “dirty bomb” by Kiev would have severe consequences for the life and health of the entire population and ecosystems of Eastern Europe.

Well, sure, but China could rise because they produced cheaper and thus made US corporate profits bigger.

• The PRC’s Rise Is A Failure Of American Presidential Leadership (Thayer)

The foundation of the People’s Republic of China’s rapid growth was laid by Deng Xiaoping. Yet, it could not have been accomplished without U.S. support and cooperation. That the PRC is now the principal enemy of the United States and its challenger in all aspects of global politics is prima facie evidence of the failure of U.S. presidential leadership to prevent its rise. The fundamental responsibility of every U.S. president was to defend the safety and national security of the United States. Since the end of World War II, the central objective of every U.S. president was to sustain what their predecessors had created. Then, having defeated one peer competitor, the Soviet Union, their obligation was to prevent the rise of another. It was an easier strategic task given the abject poverty and military weakness of the PRC.

Thus, sustaining the status quo should have been a far easier task than generating U.S. victory in World War II and the defeat of the Soviets in the Cold War. Yet they failed. This failure compels an examination of why it occurred, and thus why post-Cold War U.S. presidents wasted what had been provided by previous generations. The buck stops with the U.S. presidents. During this period—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama squandered our earned advantage, before Trump attempted to reverse course, and now Joe Biden appears to be reversing Trump’s course correction.

An accounting begins with the recognition that presidential leadership regarding the PRC threat was absent in the aftermath of the Cold War. In fact, the U.S. aided the PRC’s rise through ever-greater volumes of trade and investment. While President Jimmy Carter granted Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status to Beijing in 1980, the PRC’s growth did not take off until Deng fully supported capitalism in the wake of his 1992 economic reforms. Two years later, President Clinton ended the need for MFN renewal on a yearly basis, which had been linked, at least, to improvements in the PRC’s atrocious human rights record. Clinton granted the PRC MFN status on a permanent basis and placed the PRC on the path towards membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The PRC then entered the West’s economic ecosystem. From that time, the PRC’s rise was rapid and added a new peer competitor.

“..Victoria Nuland, the architect of the 2014 EuroMaidan coup in Kiev, has said “the war is going to last six years, 16 years. So it basically depend on the new president who’s going to continue, how far he’s going to go.”

• Cash-Strapped Europe Still Paying to Arm Ukraine for Proxy Conflict (Tweedie)

Europe is spending ever more on arming Ukraine — while its populations become increasingly impoverished. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is set to demand at a Ukraine aid conference in the UK that member states stump up a further €50 billion to cover the cost of financial and military aid to the Kiev regime. That comes as governments of European Union and NATO members implement austerity policies and raise interest rates to extortionate levels in the face of the inflationary crisis brought on by sanctions on Russia. Brussels-based journalist Elijah J Magnier told Sputnik that the “Eurocrat” von der Leyen’s demand was out-of-touch “when Europe is under a stress and financial difficulties, when the French President, Emmanuel Macron, is having [disagreement] with the population because you want to increase the pension scheme saying there is no money.”

“It is really not appropriate and doesn’t correspond to the suffering that the European citizens are going through,” Magnier stressed. The major concern is that “Europe is preparing itself too, for a long war with Russia,” Magnier warned. “It means Europe is doubling down, is not facing the reality that the Ukrainians are losing, that at the end of the day, every war is solved only around the table.” “When we hear the Americans saying: ‘we will send F-16s’, capable of carrying nuclear bombs, or we going to give Ukraine weapons or ammunition with depleted uranium, it seems that what has been done so far by the 50 Western nations and their allies meeting in Ramstein in Germany, has not been enough to drag Russia into a wider-scale war.” The journalist noted that US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the architect of the 2014 EuroMaidan coup in Kiev, has said “the war is going to last six years, 16 years. So it basically depend on the new president who’s going to continue, how far he’s going to go.”

“We are treated in these twilight months of the “Joe Biden” regime to a cavalcade of revelations laying out the degeneracy of a federal justice system at war with the American people..”

• Teachable Moment (Jim Kunstler)

I hope you agree this has been an instructive week for our republic, sinking to the bottom as fast as the Titan submersible on its way to consort with its grandmama, the RMS Titanic. Here’s what I learned, for instance, from Special Counsel John Durham’s visit to the House Judiciary Committee: When asked why he did not seek grand jury testimony from the primary culprits in the Russia Collusion hoax — Comey, McCabe, and Strzok — he told the room it would have been “unproductive” because they habitually claimed to “not recall” anything when testifying in Congress. That’s an interesting legal theory. If it is so, we must suppose that any witness in a criminal inquiry may decline testifying on the grounds of claiming a defective memory. I’m not a lawyer, of course, but is it not the case that witnesses can be prompted to recall events when presented with evidence? E.g., “…here is your smartphone text of July 29 saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll stop him [Trump].’ What means did you have in mind to accomplish that, Mr. Strzok?”

In the four-year lead-up to his personal appearance in the House, many of us were fooled into thinking Mr. Durham was a serious dude. (I sure was.) Turns out the ferocious facial hair masked a rather timorous persona. Mr. Durham apparently did not dare test the boundaries of the narrow lane laid out in the scoping directives set forth by then Attorney General Barr. Mr. D. did find a line of criminal conduct between Lawfare artist Michal Sussmann, the Fusion GPS disinfo company, the DC law firm Perkins Coie, and candidate Hillary MyTurn in the creation and marketing of the Steele Dossier — yet he never called Hillary to do any ‘splainin about it (or anything else she did in 2016). Weird, a little bit.

While his omissions and missteps were spotlighted by the Republican members, Mr. Durham was mugged, kicked to the curb, stomped, and peed-on by the committee Democrats, who still labor to prop-up the dead-letter Russia Collusion fraud against all evidence and reason. As usual, the lead attack dog on that was Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). He was rewarded the next day with a censure vote for seven years of shameless lying about said fraud, and stripped of his seat on the House Intel Committee, which he used, as then-chairman, to launch Trump Impeachment #1 in 2019 with fake “whistleblower” (and CIA goblin) Eric Ciaramella, whom Mr. Schiff naturally lied about never meeting prior to the proceeding.] We are treated in these twilight months of the “Joe Biden” regime to a cavalcade of revelations laying out the degeneracy of a federal justice system at war with the American people and its shady machinations in service to the Biden family global bribery operation.

Babies

"Oh, you have babies… can I see them?" pic.twitter.com/fXU8dKGCtU

— B&S (@_B___S) June 23, 2023

Human hand vs eagle’s talon

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Debt Rattle May 30 2023

May 302023

May 30, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:07 am Finance Tagged with: ballot harvesting, Borrell, diamonds, Kosovo, Lindsey Graham, McCarthy, Monty Python, Moscow, Serbia 20 Responses »

Vincent van Gogh A Lane near Arles (Side of a Country Lane) 1888

• Russia Hasn’t Started To ‘Act Seriously’ In Ukraine – Envoy (RT)

• Moscow Attacked By Drones – Mayor (RT)

• Russia Will Not Negotiate Until It Wins In Ukraine Conflict – Borrell (TASS)

• Memorial Service (Jim Kunstler)

• Russian Arrest Warrant For Lindsey Graham Over ‘Killing Russians’ Remarks (ZH)

• Clumsy Excuses: Russian FM On Claim Graham’s Words Taken Out Of Context (TASS)

• Ukraine Posts Longer Video Of Lindsay Graham’s Visit (R.)

• Biden, McCarthy Agree on $886 Billion Military Budget (Antiwar)

• Believing Impossible Things (Alastair Crooke)

• US Obsession With Crushing Russia Has Dismantled Middle East Agenda (Inlakesh)

• EU Threatens To Ban Twitter (RT)

• Sanctions On Russian Diamonds Put A Million Jobs At Risk (RT)

• 50 Injured As NATO Troops Clash With Serb Demonstrators (RT)

• Trump Campaign Fundraises For Ballot Harvesting Operations (PM)

• Zero Young Healthy Individuals Died of COVID-19, Israeli Data Show

• John Cleese Holds Line Against Calls to Cancel Scene in Life of Brian (Turley)

Bosi

The former commander of the Australian special forces, Ricardo Bosi, made a sensational statement: “Ukraine has been the center of globalists for decades … The CIA has been working in Ukraine for 70 years” pic.twitter.com/i5brJS2t3i

— Spriter (@Spriter99880) May 29, 2023

Graham/McCain

pic.twitter.com/CUkngG9yez

— Branislav Pipović (@BranaPipovic) May 29, 2023

“..sooner or later, of course, this escalation may get a new dimension which we do not need and we do not want..”

• Russia Hasn’t Started To ‘Act Seriously’ In Ukraine – Envoy (RT)

The outcome of the Ukraine conflict hinges on whether NATO continues to prop up Kiev with arms shipments, Andrey Kelin, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, said in an interview released on Saturday. Speaking to the BBC, when asked how long he thought it would take for the fighting to cease, Kelin replied that it “depends on the efforts in escalation of war that [are] being undertaken by NATO countries, especially by the UK.” The envoy went on to say that “it is a big idealistic mistake to think that Ukraine may prevail,” adding that Russia is 16 times bigger than Ukraine and possesses enormous resources. He stated further that Moscow “hasn’t… started yet to act very seriously.”

At the same time, Kelin warned that “sooner or later, of course, this escalation may get a new dimension which we do not need and we do not want,” pointing to the UK’s recent decision to send Ukraine long-range missiles and tanks, as well as ongoing deliberations about potential shipments of modern aircraft. However, he did not rule out that the conflict could be settled diplomatically, saying that the two sides “can make peace tomorrow.” On Saturday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said that the Ukraine conflict could be resolved if Kiev were to ditch its ambitions to join NATO and the EU, recognize “new territorial realities” and designate Russian as a state language. However, Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, dismissed the demands, insisting instead that to make peace, Russia must withdraw all its troops from the territory Kiev claims as its own, pay reparations and extradite “war criminals.”

Since the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Western countries have provided Kiev with billions of dollars in security assistance, a policy which Moscow claims makes the military bloc a direct participant in the hostilities. The UK has emerged as one of Ukraine’s most active supporters, having committed £4.6 billion ($5.7 billion) in military aid. Earlier this month, London provided Kiev with long-range Storm Shadow missiles, which were subsequently used by Ukrainian troops to target the civilian population in the Russian city of Lugansk, according to Moscow. In March, the UK announced that it would send Ukraine armor-piercing tank rounds containing depleted uranium, with the Russian Defense Ministry warning that the munitions would cause “irreparable harm” to soldiers and civilians alike.

Someone wants Kiev flattened.

• Moscow Attacked By Drones – Mayor (RT)

Drones attacked the Russian capital on Tuesday morning, damaging several buildings, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has said. Sobyanin ordered the evacuation of residents from the two apartment blocks that were targeted, according to several messages posted on Telegram. Emergency officials told RIA Novosti that two drones struck residential buildings. No information regarding casualties has been provided yet. Sobyanin, citing data from the city medical services, said that no residents of the buildings hit by the aircraft were seriously hurt. He added that two people requested medical assistance at the scene, but no one had to be taken to the hospital.

Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyov wrote on Telegram that “several drones” were shot down by air defenses as they were flying towards the city. Telegram channel SHOT posted an unverified video of what it said was the destruction of a drone mid-air. The attack comes after two Ukrainian drones unsuccessfully attempted to strike the Kremlin earlier this month. Moscow accused Kiev of attempting to assassinate Putin and vowed retaliation. Kiev denied responsibility, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky saying “we don’t attack Putin or Moscow.”

Borrell handed himself a new job: “the defense minister of the European Union.” Did anyone ask for that?

• Russia Will Not Negotiate Until It Wins In Ukraine Conflict – Borrell (TASS)

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrel said he is “not optimistic” about the situation in Ukraine and believes that Russia will not negotiate until it wins in the Ukraine conflict. “I see the clear will of Russia to win in the war,” the European Union foreign policy chief said speaking at an expert forum in Spain’s Barcelona. “Russia will not negotiate until it wins.” “I am not optimistic in my expectations about how this conflict may develop in the summer,” he stated adding that the European Union should “continue building up its military assistance for Ukraine.” Borrell stated earlier in Brussels that while he kept coordinating military assistance to Ukraine from the European Union, he did not feel himself as the EU’s top diplomat, but “the defense minister of the European Union.”.

“..as our leadership turned more pathological and pathocratic, so did our military endeavors..”

• Memorial Service (Jim Kunstler)

An anxious silence falls over the land this Memorial Day as we discern increasingly that those we put in charge of this shape-shifting thing called the public interest are running out of trips to lay on the people. Something grotesque is revealing itself: a bankruptcy not just of money but of national purpose, meaning, and legitimacy. You realize this day, with a breaking heart, that your country has been stolen by psychopaths.Brace for impact. We’re already off the road and now it’s only a matter of how this vehicle comes to a stop in the ditch. Then, it’s a question of how each of us emerges from the smoldering wreckage. The main thing, though, is clear to everyone: What we were riding in is no more. We’re out there stumbling around in the dark, in shock, trying desperately to assess our whereabouts and what has happened to us.

Now, the trouble with being ruled by psychopaths is that they don’t care about other people. They are actually incapable of imagining the lives of others, especially the fact that these others care about each other, and what happens to them. You may have noticed, for instance, that the psychopath Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) went to Ukraine last week and declared, “Russians are dying. We have never spent money so well.” Only a couple of months ago, he called for the assassination of Vladimir Putin. He stopped short of dissing Mr. Putin’s mother. Ukraine, of course, is a lost cause, and it was never a good cause in the first place. Contrary to Lindsay Graham’s untoward utterance, American money has killed far more Ukrainians than Russians. He overlooked [this] unappetizing tidbit because he doesn’t care about the Ukrainians, for whose sake our “folks” in charge supposedly undertook this clusterfuck.

Lindsay Graham also may not have noticed that our country is collapsing and Russia is not. That must be because Lindsay Graham does not care about Americans, either. As for our money, it looks like most of the rest of the world – the nations that still produce things of value – are so turned-off by American pathocracy that they are seeking every way possible to stop using our money in international trade settlements. That money, our dollar, became the world’s reserve currency because our country ended up on top in the previous world war and for the better part of a century afterward dominated the planet militarily. Naturally, as our leadership turned more pathological and pathocratic, so did our military endeavors – until lately they amount to little more than just smashing up other countries to show we can do it.

“..it was the Ukrainian presidency’s office itself that was responsible for the editing and circulating of the remarks in the first place.”

• Russian Arrest Warrant For Lindsey Graham Over ‘Killing Russians’ Remarks (ZH)

Russia’s Interior Ministry has issued an arrest warrant for South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham after video surfaced of the Republican hawk telling Ukrainian officials that “Russians are dying” due to US military aid and that “it’s the best money we ever spent.” There are claims that the video released of the Friday meeting in Kiev wherein Graham spoke the words to Ukraine’s President Zelensky were edited, however. And yet, it was Zelensky himself that posted the edited clip to his official social media channels. Russia’s Investigative Committee announced the criminal case against Graham as he “declared the financial involvement of the United States is causing the death of Russian citizens.”

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted to Graham’s provocative statements by saying, “It’s difficult to imagine a greater shame for a country than having such senators” while Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said the Republican Senator is an “old fool. “The arrest warrant and him being placed on a ‘wanted list’ will of course remain largely symbolic, given Graham certainly won’t be traveling to Russian territory or through its airspace anytime in the foreseeable future. On Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to reporting from Reuters which said Graham’s remarks were taken out of context: “Reports by Reuters that remarks by US Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina) made during a meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky may have been taken out of context represent clumsy, shameless excuses, a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry made public on Monday said.

“‘It turns out,’ that’s not what Senator Graham said or how he said it. Just like with similar cannibalistic musings by former US President George W. Bush, clumsy, shameful excuses are being bandied about: so, allegedly, the senator’s words were taken out of context, there was some ‘editing’ and so on. Who would have doubted that the politician himself and his spin doctors, such as the top Anglo-Saxon media outlets and news agencies, would, as they say, ‘play dumb.’ What’s next? They will tell us that Lindsey Graham is a product of [artificial intelligence] and doesn’t actually exist?” the Foreign Ministry asked rhetorically. It stressed that this “attempt is doomed to fail.” “It is already impossible to clean oneself [and one’s reputation] from the stain of such remarks, even if they were uttered separately,” the ministry added.” But again, it was the Ukrainian presidency’s office itself that was responsible for the editing and circulating of the remarks in the first place.

“This entire story with cowardly excuses and ludicrous attempts to absolve Lindsey Graham is yet another blow to the already faded reputation of Reuters and the BBC..”

• Clumsy Excuses: Russian FM On Claim Graham’s Words Taken Out Of Context (TASS)

Reports by Reuters that remarks by US Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina) made during a meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky may have been taken out of context represent clumsy, shameless excuses, a statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry made public on Monday said. “‘It turns out,’ that’s not what Senator Graham said or how he said it. Just like with similar cannibalistic musings by former US President George W. Bush, clumsy, shameful excuses are being bandied about: so, allegedly, the senator’s words were taken out of context, there was some ‘editing’ and so on. Who would have doubted that the politician himself and his spin doctors, such as the top Anglo-Saxon media outlets and news agencies, would, as they say, ‘play dumb.’

What’s next? They will tell us that Lindsey Graham is a product of [artificial intelligence] and doesn’t actually exist?” the Foreign Ministry asked rhetorically. It stressed that this “attempt is doomed to fail.” “It is already impossible to clean oneself [and one’s reputation] from the stain of such remarks, even if they were uttered separately,” the ministry added. Earlier, at a meeting in Kiev with Zelensky, Graham seemingly linked the fact that “Russians are dying” in the Ukrainian conflict with US aid for Ukraine, saying it is “the best money we’ve ever spent.” The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed out that this was hardly the first instance of such hateful remarks and that “the senator is not alone.” “The Nazi philosophy of hatred toward Russians is actually what unites the Kiev regime and its American handlers,” the ministry emphasized.

The ministry also stated that widespread popular outrage has forced the Western propaganda machine “with its cogs, such as Reuters and the BBC, who led the campaign to whitewash the [words of the] lawmaker, to initiate a crisis management approach and attempt to reverse the situation.” “This entire story with cowardly excuses and ludicrous attempts to absolve Lindsey Graham is yet another blow to the already faded reputation of Reuters and the BBC, which were left to worm their way of out the mess on behalf of both Washington and Kiev. This is not journalism, but PR agencies carrying out an assignment for the ‘collective West,’” the Russian Foreign Ministry concluded. Earlier, Reuters, having examined a complete recording of Graham’s meeting with the Ukrainian leader, said that the remarks by the US senator may have been taken out of context.

“There was a time in America that we were this way: fighting to the last person, we were going to be free or die.” WE, Lindsey?

• Ukraine Posts Longer Video Of Lindsay Graham’s Visit (R.)

Russia’s interior ministry has put U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on a wanted list, Russian news agency TASS said on Monday (May 29).In an edited video released by the Ukrainian president’s office of Graham’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday (May 26), Graham was shown saying “the Russians are dying” and then saying U.S. support was the “best money we’ve ever spent”.After Russia criticised the remarks, Ukraine released a full video of the meeting which showed the two remarks were not linked. The longer video clip showed the Ukrainian President praises the United States for military assistance valued at $38 billion, thanking Graham for bipartisan support. Graham responds with: “the best money we’ve ever spent.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced Graham, suggesting his comment on U.S. financial assistance was linked to a later remark that Russians “are dying” in the conflict. But the release by the Ukrainian president’s office of Graham’s complete remarks showed there was no such link.Graham said he was visiting on the 457th day of a war that Russia had assumed would be completed within three days and Graham said Ukrainians resisting the invasion reminded him of “our better selves in America. “There was a time in America that we were this way: fighting to the last person, we were going to be free or die.” “Now you are free,” Zelenskiy responded in the encounter. “And we will be.” Graham replied: “And the Russians are dying.”

And there’s Graham again..

• Biden, McCarthy Agree on $886 Billion Military Budget (Antiwar)

The debt ceiling agreement reached between the White House and House Republicans that was announced Sunday caps military spending at $886 billion for 2024, matching President Biden’s requested budget. Republicans negotiating the debt ceiling deal only sought non-military spending cuts. The $886 billion cap for military spending represents about a 3.3% increase from 2023. The White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) still need to get the debt ceiling agreement passed through Congress. Many hawkish Republicans will likely oppose the deal as they previously blasted Biden’s massive $886 billion request as “inadequate.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) slammed the debt limit deal in an appearance on Fox News on Sunday. “The Biden defense budget was a joke before, and if we adopt it as Republicans, we will be doing a big disservice to the party of Ronald Reagan,” Graham said.

“The biggest winner of the Biden defense budget is China because they’ll have a bigger navy,” Graham added. Hawks in Congress have gotten their way over the past two years as they approved significantly more military spending than what President Biden requested for 2022 and 2023. For 2023, President Biden asked for $813 billion in military spending, but Congress added $45 billion, bringing the finalized National Defense Authorization Act to $858 billion. A similar increase for 2024 could bring the NDAA close to $1 trillion. The US also authorizes other national security spending that is not included in the NDAA. According to analyst Winslow Wheeler, factoring in other types of expenditures on the national security state, including interest on debt and the Veteran Affairs budget, would bring the total defense budget for 2024 to around $1.5 trillion.

“.. they understand that the true ‘threats’ to the US derive from its internal divisions, and not from external sources.”

• Believing Impossible Things (Alastair Crooke)

The recent G7 summit should be understood as firstly, the shaping of a battlespace in the ‘War of Narratives’ whose principal ‘front’ today is the Team Biden insistence that only one ‘reality’ — the US-led ‘Rules’ ideology (and it alone) – can predominate. And, secondly to underline pointedly that the West is ‘not losing’ in this war against the other ‘reality’. This other reality is the multivalent ‘otherness’ that self-evidently is attracting more and more support around the world. Many in the West are simply unaware of how fast the geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting: The original plate bifurcation (the failed financial war declared on Russia), already has led to a building wave. Anger is growing. People now no longer feel alone in rejecting western hegemony – they “no longer care”.

In just the week that preceded the G7 summit, the Arab League literally ‘went multi-polar’; It quit its former pro-US automaticity. The embrace of President Assad and the Syrian government was both the logical consequence to the secondary tectonic-plate shift set in motion by China with its Saudi-Iranian diplomacy — a revolution which Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) then logically extended to the entire Arab sphere. MbS sealed this ‘break-free’ of US control through having President al-Assad invited to the Summit to symbolise the League’s act of generalised iconoclasm. For the West, it is ontologically impossible to tolerate their reality being disassembled: to see their society and the world split in two. The narrative reality is so embedded via the well-honed effectiveness of MSM messaging however, that politicians have become lazy. They do not have to argue their case, and have no incentive to hold back on untruths either.

The dynamics are exorable: an over-hyped ‘monolithic reality’ evolves into a Manichaean fight to the death. Any backsliding by ‘principals’ could result in the collapse of the Media narrative ‘house of cards’. (This notion of a monolithic reality is not one shared by most other societies who see reality as multi-faceted). Denial becomes endemic. So, we witness a hawkish G7, diverting from the narrative setback (of Bakhmut falling) by the casual embrace of a ploy to supply F-16s to Ukraine; chastising China for not making President Putin ‘back off’ in Ukraine; and using the meeting to set a narrative framework for the coming confrontation with China on trade issues and Taiwan.

One commentator (at the summit) wondered “Am I still in Europe, or in Japan?”, as she listened to rhetoric as though lifted from Von Der Leyen’s earlier speech to the EU. Von de Leyen had crafted the formulation of ‘de-risking’ with China to disguise the creeping EU-China bifurcation in production on the EU Commission factory floor. This remark does however serve to underline how Von der Leyen has become a de facto member of the Biden Team. China angrily responded to the G7 summit allegation that it had become a workshop for “smearing” and slandering China. This extensive narrative-shaping for China confrontation is seen to be necessary by the G7 as the rest of the world does not view China as a genuine ‘threat’ to the US: Rather, they understand that the true ‘threats’ to the US derive from its internal divisions, and not from external sources.

The G7 salience lies not so much with the anti-China narratives launched, but, plainly said, because the entire episode expresses a western hubristic denial, which portends extreme danger in respect to Ukraine. It speaks to the reality that the West — in it’s present mental mode — will be unable to put forward any credible political initiative to end the Ukraine conflict.(Recall that Moscow was badly mauled by the earlier Minsk episode). The G7 language abjures all serious diplomacy, and signals that the imperative remains to stick with the ‘not losing’ mantra:The fall of Bakhmut is no defeat for Kiev, but a Pyrrhic loss for Putin; Ukraine is winning, Putin is losing, was the G7 messaging.

“After having illegally invaded Iraq [..] it comes off as laughable that the US is now claiming to oppose illegal invasions.”

• US Obsession With Crushing Russia Has Dismantled Middle East Agenda (Inlakesh)

As the months pass, blow after blow has been inflicted on US power in the Middle East. In direct opposition to Washington’s agenda, the Syrian Arab Republic was readmitted to the Arab League following a 12-year hiatus, paving the way to end the crisis in Syria, which the US seeks to prolong. China has also entered Middle East politics in a dramatic way, brokering an Iranian-Saudi rapprochement back in March, and this then spurred a wider normalization wave. Although the US attempted to play off the Saudi Arabia-Iran agreement as an acceptable and welcomed move, this has now clearly worked to collapse Washington’s long-term effort towards regional supremacy, which was based on feeding a proxy conflict between the two powers.

Western leaders publicly predicted that Russia’s economy would collapse under sanctions, a result which clearly has not materialized, with the IMF predicting the Russian economy will grow. Similarly, the US “maximum pressure” sanctions that were first introduced against Iran under the Trump administration, were expected to severely hinder the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue its developments in the defense field, but have failed to achieve those goals. Russia is now exporting more oil than it did in 2021, as its relations with China, the primary global competitor to the US, have advanced. Gulf States have also repeatedly let the US down and refrained from yielding to pressure to cut oil production. There is also the example of Algeria, which has become Italy’s largest gas supplier and raked in over $50 billion dollars in oil and gas revenues during 2022 alone, even as it retains close relations with Moscow.

And when it comes to the West’s ban on Russian gold bullion, the UAE, Türkiye and China have reportedly stepped in to fill the gap. However, perhaps the worst blowback against Russia sanctions has been the nullification of previous limits to Moscow-Tehran economic relations. The two nations are already the most sanctioned on earth, so they need not worry about the potential consequences from their trade, which has encouraged further cooperation between them. Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi signed a deal to finance an Iranian railway line as part of a North-South Transport Corridor. The Biden administration has employed hardline propaganda tactics in order to demonize Russia and lionize Ukraine. Although for some Western audiences the arguments set forth may have proven effective, in the global community and especially the Middle East, such rhetoric is tiresome and clearly hypocritical.

After having illegally invaded Iraq, inflicting around a million deaths, over a concoction of factually-challenged conspiracy theories about weapons of mass destruction, it comes off as laughable that the US is now claiming to oppose illegal invasions.

Musk may accept the challenge: ““This platform is hell bent on being the least untrue source of information..”

• EU Threatens To Ban Twitter (RT)

Twitter will be banned across the EU if it fails to abide by the new regulations on fighting disinformation, French Digital Transition and Telecommunications Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Monday. The warning comes as the European bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is due to fully take effect on August 25. “Disinformation is one of the gravest threats weighing on our democracies,” Barrot told France Info radio. “I hope that Twitter complies with the European rules by August 25. Otherwise, it will no longer be welcome in Europe. Twitter, if it repeatedly doesn’t follow our rules, will be banned from the EU.” The DSA mandates that search engines and large platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok, enact measures to mitigate “disinformation or election manipulation, cyber violence against women, or harms to minors online.”

The European Commission can fine offenders up to 6% of annual worldwide turnover. EU Internal Markets Commissioner Thierry Breton announced last week that Twitter had pulled out of the bloc’s voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation. “But obligations remain. You can run but you can’t hide,” Breton said, adding that DSA’s terms will be “ready for enforcement” when the compliance deadline expires in August. Billionaire Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter last year, promised to rid the platform of disinformation and hateful content, but also uphold the freedom of speech and offer more transparency. “This platform is hell bent on being the least untrue source of information,” Musk wrote on Twitter in early May.

At the same time, earlier this month Twitter fulfilled the Turkish government’s request to restrict access to some accounts in the weeks leading up to the presidential and general election in the country. Musk defended this decision by saying that he wanted to avoid Twitter getting shut down entirely in Türkiye. “We can’t go beyond the laws of a country … If we have a choice of either our people [going] to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws,” Musk told the BBC last month.

“The Indian diamond industry cuts and polishes nine out of ten diamonds in the world at a processing hub in Surat..”

• Sanctions On Russian Diamonds Put A Million Jobs At Risk (RT)

Restrictions on exports of Russian diamonds that the G7 countries have been considering for over a year pose a threat to India’s polishing industry, the Economic Times reports. The Indian diamond industry cuts and polishes nine out of ten diamonds in the world at a processing hub in Surat, the outlet said. A potential embargo is weighing heavily on Surat’s more than 4,000 diamond processing companies, which employ at least a million craftsmen, polishers, and traders, according to industry experts. The town of Surat imports at least 35% of its gems from Russia’s mining giant Alrosa, which accounts for 30% of global rough diamond output.

“If the sanctions continue, then there will be a lot of uncertainty in the employment of one million workers,” said the chairman of the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council, Vipul Shah. Russia’s diamond trade has so far avoided sanctions due to resistance from major importers such as Belgium, which is home to the world’s biggest diamond trading hub in Antwerp. The Belgian government has repeatedly blocked the EU’s embargo plans, warning that the move could cost thousands of jobs. At the recent G7 summit in Japan, leaders pledged to restrict trade in “diamonds mined, processed or produced in Russia” in an effort to further cut Moscow’s revenues.

In a joint statement, the group of wealthy nations said it would curb the $4.5 billion Russian diamond trade, including by using high-tech methods of tracing. “We are awaiting a proper understanding of how the sanctions will be executed, since there is no way to trace the origin of rough gems right now,” Shah said. Meanwhile, supplies of rough diamonds have been shrinking since Western sanctions disconnected Russia from the SWIFT international financial processing network last year. Indian exports of cut and polished diamonds have also slumped as US and EU firms shunned buying diamonds sourced from Russia.

“The Serb population of these four towns boycotted elections in April in which four ethnic Albanian mayors won with a turnout of less than 4%..”

• 50 Injured As NATO Troops Clash With Serb Demonstrators (RT)

NATO forces attacked a group of demonstrators in the majority-Serb town of Zvecan in Kosovo, RT Balkan reported on Monday. Stun grenades and tear gas were deployed, and around 50 people were injured. Serb demonstrators staged a sit-down protest outside municipal buildings in Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavic on Monday morning, preventing ethnic Albanian officials from taking office after elections boycotted by the Serb population as illegitimate. Kosovo police officers arrived on the scene in Zvecan, backed up by members of NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR). The heavily-armored NATO troops surrounded the demonstrators, who refused to disperse, RT Balkan’s journalist on the scene reported. KFOR then threw stun grenades and tear gas into the crowd, provoking a riot.

The Serb demonstrators pelted rocks at the NATO troops, and received baton strikes and rubber bullets in return. Fifty people went to a hospital in nearby Mitrovica, and two were admitted to the emergency room. 25 KFOR soldiers were injured in the melee, Italy’s ANSA news agency said. 11 of those reportedly hurt were Italians. The protesters broke up shortly after the clashes, vowing to return and continue their demonstration on Tuesday. The latest flareup in tensions began when local mayors in four majority Serb towns in northern Kosovo resigned last year after authorities in Pristina announced plans to force residents to switch their Serbian identity documents for Kosovo-issued ones. The Serb population of these four towns boycotted elections in April in which four ethnic Albanian mayors won with a turnout of less than 4%. Nevertheless, the government in Pristina treated the votes as legitimate and the mayors were installed on Friday amid fierce opposition from the Serbs, who view the debacle as a naked power grab aimed at driving them from the breakaway province.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 with the support of the US and many of its NATO allies. Kosovo was historically a province of Serbia, and Belgrade – along with many world governments – does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state. While NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and a number of Kosovo’s Western backers have urged Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leader, Albin Kurti, to de-escalate the situation in the north of the province, he has apparently not heeded their warnings. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Sunday that Kurti “longs and dreams of being a [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky.” Due to the clashes, Serbia placed its army on high alert, moving some units closer to the region’s border. Defense Minister Milos Vucevic said that “it is clear that terror against the Serb community in Kosovo is happening.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1663290819564953604

https://twitter.com/i/status/1663298598615011328

“..where it’s legal..”

• Trump Campaign Fundraises For Ballot Harvesting Operations (PM)

The Trump campaign has announced that it is looking to beat Democrat ballot harvesting in states across the country, specifically taking aim at operations funded by billionaire George Soros. “We recently alerted you that a Soros-linked Super PAC has begun targeting 6 battleground states with a $75 MILLION spending blitz to buy Crooked Joe the White House,” a Thursday campaign fundraising email read, according to the Washington Times. “But there’s something important we want to add…some of those states have legalized BALLOT HARVESTING,” the email added, highlighting Soros-linked efforts in the battleground of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“At the beginning of the year, President Trump made a major announcement that our campaign would ballot harvest in the states where it’s legal to counter the Left’s schemes,” the email added, asking for financial contributions to the Trump campaign’s Ballot Harvesting Fund. Ballot harvesting refers to the act of a person other than the voter turning in a ballot, usually a mail-in ballot. While Republicans have previously disavowed the practice and pushed for it to be eliminated, Trump earlier this year stated that he would embrace it in states where it’s legal in order to fight back against the Democrats. Many pundits have also called for the GOP to get on board and fight fire with fire, instead of letting the Democrats undertake the practice with no pushback.

In February, a fundraising email stated, “The radical Democrats have used ballot harvesting to cancel out YOUR vote and walk away with elections that they NEVER should have won. But I’m doing something HUGE to fight back.” He continued: “Our path forward is to MASTER the Democrats’ own game of harvesting ballots in every state we can. But that also means we need to start laying the foundation for victory RIGHT NOW.” Trump echoed the sentiment in March, telling the crowd at CPAC, “We will become masters at ballot harvesting.” “We have to beat the Democrats at their own game, and we’ll do it legally. The agenda I’ve laid out today will end America’s destruction.”

Now let’s see the excess deaths stats.

• Zero Young Healthy Individuals Died of COVID-19, Israeli Data Show (ET)

Zero healthy individuals under the age of 50 have died of COVID-19 in Israel, according to newly released data. “Zero deceased of 18–49 years of age with no underlying morbidities,” the Israel Ministry of Health (MOH) said in response to a formal request from an attorney. Officials noted that the statement only applies to COVID-19 deaths where the MOH conducted an epidemiological investigation and had received information about the underlying diseases. “Zero is a very, very clear number, and cannot be subject to interpretation,” Yoav Yehezkelli, a specialist in internal medicine and medical management, and former lecturer in the Department of Emergency and Disaster Management at Tel Aviv University in Israel, told The Epoch Times.

“Why were all the extreme measures of school closures, vaccination of children, and lockdowns needed?” he added. The information was sparked by a freedom of information request filed by attorney Ori Xabi, who has been filing several such requests as he seeks to obtain information from the MOH regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 policies. Xabi asked to know the average age of people who died of COVID-19, segmented by vaccination status at the time of death; how many COVID-19 patients with no underlying morbidities under the age of 50 died; and the annual number of cardiac arrest cases between 2018 to 2022. According to the MOH response, the average age of vaccinated COVID-19 patients who died was 80.2 years. The average for the unvaccinated was 77.4 years.

The MOH emphasized that the data they have about the underlying diseases of patients is partial since it relies on information provided by the patients or their relatives, if they chose to do so. And then, only in cases in which the MOH conducted an epidemiological investigation. Therefore “the available information does not necessarily reflect the health status of the patient” the MOH wrote adding that they do not have access to the patients’ medical records. It is not clear why the MOH responded to Xabi’s request using only cases where the MOH had conducted an epidemiological investigation, and which was limited to deceased patients where the families had cooperated, since in 2020 the MOH told the Israeli Knesset—the Israeli parliament—that they use an intelligence system that provides the MOH with extensive information about deceased patients that included “underlying diseases.”

“..These comedy giants are set upon by an Army of Lilliputians who have contributed little to culture beyond chilling artists and writers into obedient silence..”

• John Cleese Holds Line Against Calls to Cancel Scene in Life of Brian (Turley)

We have previously discussed how comedians have been objecting that woke activists are killing comedy. The complaint is that a group of perpetually pissed off, humorless people are remaking the world in their own image. It began with college campuses where comedians are now saying are dead as venues since you cannot safely make any joke that insults any group other than white straight males or Christians or conservatives. Others have objected to hate speech laws limiting comedians, particularly after some comedians have been prosecuted for “malicious communications” or insulting groups or religious figures. Six out of ten students view offensive jokes as hate speech. This week, however, activists appear to have met their match in a legend of comedy who has opposed the cutting of a scene from the movie The Life of Brian. No, activists are not upset with the endless jokes about Italians, Christians, and Jews. It is the scene involving a man who wants to become a women and have a child. John Cleese is refusing to yield.

In The Life of Brian, the scene involves “Stan” who announces that he wants to be a woman named Loretta and have babies. Activists objected that it made fun of transgender people and demanded that it be cut from the film. The scene shows Stan declaring “I want to be a woman… It’s my right as a man. I want to have babies… It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.” After Cleese’s protest, the character snaps, “Don’t you oppress me!” Some reported that Cleese had agreed to cut the scene. However, Cleese tweeted out a correction of the “misreporting.” What is interesting is that Rob Reiner is reportedly working on the reboot. Reiner is known as someone who is a champion of the left in Hollywood. This may be an inauspicious start for the reboot effort. Cleese is not alone in raising this alarm. Comedians including Chris Rock blamed the range of “unfunny TV shows” on the fact that “everybody’s scared to make a move”. Ricky Gervais objected that the BBC is now paralyzed in fear of offending anyone. Jennifer Saunders that people now “talk themselves out of stuff now because everything is sensitive.”

The same complaint has been made in the age of woke advertising that funny commercials seem increasingly rare as opposed to corporate virtue signaling. The director of the classic comedy Airplane! observed that humor is being squeezed out of Hollywood and the movie today would have virtually every joke removed. David Zucker called it the “death of creativity.” They are now set upon by a legion of humorless people who seek to reduce the world to their own narrow range of acceptable levity or irony. These comedy giants are set upon by an Army of Lilliputians who have contributed little to culture beyond chilling artists and writers into obedient silence or compulsive comedy criteria. Of course, Cleese could always use the line from Bryan’s mother: “He’s a very naughty boy! Now, piss off!”

Wynnum
https://twitter.com/i/status/1662997866917564417

CO2

Yeahhhhh I'm keeping my diesel 4×4
They can fuck off pic.twitter.com/75D91JyJXA

— The White Rabbit Podcast (@AllBiteNoBark88) May 28, 2023

Turtle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1663220517732597766

Pheasant

Cabot's tragopan is a pheasant from the mountain ranges of south-east China

Below the beak is a decorative wattle, and there are a pair of blue soft "horns"
These are inflated as part of a courtship display to impress females,

Watch it here pic.twitter.com/fYxjs2e9qu

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) May 29, 2023

Woow

Woow pic.twitter.com/8Y57k1rm9Z

— The Best (@Figensport) May 29, 2023

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Debt Rattle May 29 2023

May 292023

May 29, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: DeSantis, F-16, Gonzalo Lira, Kissinger, Kosovo, Lindsey Graham, peace plan, Superpac 40 Responses »

Paul Gauguin Apatarao 1893

• Russia Ready For Ukraine Peace Talks, But On Its Conditions – Envoy (Tass)

• Russia Outlines Conditions For Ukraine Peace Deal (RT)

• Lavrov: West’s Plans To Send F-16s To Kiev Unacceptable Escalation (TASS)

• West Waging Its War Against Russia ‘On All Fronts’ – Kremlin (TASS)

• Moscow Warns West Against ‘Playing With Fire’ (RT)

• F-16s For Ukraine Won’t Be A Game Changer – Bloomberg (RT)

• State Department Won’t Say If It’s Working to Free Gonzalo Lira (Antiwar)

• DeSantis Superpac Plans To Spend $200 Million In 4 States (CTH)

• DeSantis Says He Would Sign Legislation to Defund ‘Corrupt’ IRS (ET)

• Russia Condemns Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Comments on Dead Russians (Antiwar)

• Europe’s Largest Air Force Drills Start In Finland, Norway, Sweden (Az.)

• Kosovo PM Dreams Of Becoming New Zelensky – Serbian President (RT)

• Saudi Arabia Calls Russia Out Over Oil Output – WSJ (RT)

• EU Commissioner Reprimands Elon Musk Over Disinfo (RT)

• Kissinger vs. ‘The Most Dangerous Man in America’ (Gosztola)

Mind control

Yikes pic.twitter.com/qvuqX123Gt

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 28, 2023

Very remarkable

Hunter

Hunter Biden is called out by Russian news media for filming himself in dozens of sex tapes with under age girls while measuring and using crack cocaine. pic.twitter.com/E7ggtvVB2E

— Robert Sepehr (@robertsepehr) May 28, 2023

Two different voices on the same topic, the Ambassador to Great Britain and the Deputy Foreign Minister.

“He dismissed thinking that Ukraine may prevail as “a big idealistic mistake.”

• Russia Ready For Ukraine Peace Talks, But On Its Conditions – Envoy (Tass)

Russia is ready for peace talks with Ukraine but it will not give up its conditions, Russian Ambassador to Great Britain Andrey Kelin said in an interview with the BBC on Sunday.”We want peace, but on certain conditions, of course. For us, two things are important. That there will be no threat from Ukraine to Russia – this is one thing. And second, that Russians in Ukraine will be treated like all other nations in the world. Like French people are being treated in Belgium, or like Italians and Germans are being treated in Switzerland, not differently. <…> That’s a grave violation of the Human Rights Declaration and of all documentation,” Kelin said, as he described the developments in Ukraine in recent years as “extreme nationalism.”

According to Kelin, Russia’s current military purpose is to liberate the Donbass from the occupation. He dismissed thinking that Ukraine may prevail as “a big idealistic mistake.” “We can make peace tomorrow, if the Ukrainian side is prepared to negotiate, but at the moment there are no preconditions for that, I am afraid, because the president of Ukraine has prohibited any negotiations,” the Russian diplomat maintained, adding that he didn’t believe that simply freezing the conflict was a good idea. “It will not make a platform for a stable and long-term peace in Europe,” Kelin explained. The envoy reiterated the Russian nuclear doctrine does not envisage using nukes in the conflict in Ukraine. However, Kelin said that he was worried about a continued escalation of the conflict as he referred to weapons supplies to Kiev currently being ramped up.

Maersheimer

"The tragic truth is: if the West had not pursued NATO expansion into Ukraine, it is unlikely there would be a war in Ukraine today."

—Professor John Mearsheimer pic.twitter.com/SDoh1ooA5s

— sarah (@sahouraxo) May 27, 2023

“Ukraine “must return to a neutral non-aligned status” and “refuse to join NATO and the EU..”

• Russia Outlines Conditions For Ukraine Peace Deal (RT)

The Ukraine conflict could be settled if Kiev were to re-commit to its neutral status, recognize “new territorial realities,” and declare Russian as a state language, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said in an interview released on Saturday. Speaking to TASS news agency, the diplomat said Moscow “is convinced that a peace settlement will be possible only if the Ukrainian armed forces cease hostilities, and Western weapons shipments are stopped.” He also stressed that to achieve a durable peace, Ukraine “must return to a neutral non-aligned status” and “refuse to join NATO and the EU,” adding that Kiev should recognize the “new territorial realities” that emerged after people exercised their right to self-determination.

The diplomat was referring to four former Ukrainian regions that overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in public referendums last autumn, as well as Crimea. Galuzin noted that another crucial element of any peace settlement is Kiev’s commitment to respect the rights of the country’s Russian-speaking population and other minorities. “Russian should be designated as a state language at the legislative level. It is necessary to ensure that basic human rights, including freedom of faith, are observed in Ukraine,” he stressed.

On Saturday, Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, dismissed Moscow’s conditions, issuing Kiev’s own list of demands. Those include the immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops from territory Kiev claims as its own, the “extradition of war criminals,” the creation of a “buffer zone” on Russian territory, as well as “voluntary renunciation of Russian assets seized in other countries in favor of Ukraine”. Earlier this week, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that while Moscow does not want the Ukraine conflict to be frozen, there are no prerequisites for a peace settlement yet, pointing out that Kiev has prohibited any talks with the current Russian leadership.

“I hope reasonable people will step away from unconditional support for the neo-Nazi regime that the West itself created..”

• Lavrov: West’s Plans To Send F-16s To Kiev Unacceptable Escalation (TASS)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov slammed plans by Western countries to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine as an unacceptable escalation. “Certainly, this is an unacceptable escalation. I hope there are sensible people in the West who understand that,” Lavrov told the “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” TV show, an excerpt of which was posted by reporter Pavel Zarubin on Telegram on Sunday. According to Lavrov, “Western political analysts have been discussing how to decolonize Russia.” “They mean dividing our country. I hope sensible people will abandon their reckless support for the neo-Nazi regime which was created by the West itself,” Russia’s top diplomat added. On May 21, US President Joe Biden said at a news conference following the G7 summit in Hiroshima that the West will start training Ukrainian pilots on F-16s and other fourth-generation Western combat aircraft.

“..be tough but open to what could help us clearly communicate our concerns..”

• West Waging Its War Against Russia ‘On All Fronts’ – Kremlin (TASS)

Western countries are waging their war against Russia in all domains, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with the “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” TV show on Sunday. “War is being waged in a broader sense. A war is being waged against us on all fronts, be it the economy, international relations, or in terms of ownership,” he explained. Peskov urged Russia not to succumb to emotions and keep a sober mind in these circumstances. “We should remain focused and strong, and do <…> what best suits our interests, be tough but open to what could help us clearly communicate our concerns, and what we find unacceptable for ourselves, what will be fighting against,” he maintained.

“..it is Poland and the Baltic States – Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – that are “executing on the ground the aim set by the US to weaken Russia, deliver it a strategic defeat.”

• Moscow Warns West Against ‘Playing With Fire’ (RT)

The US and its allies are “playing with fire” by doubling down on their support for Kiev amid the conflict with Moscow, including by planning to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. “Of course, it’s an unacceptable escalation” Lavrov said regarding potential deliveries of American-made warplanes to Kiev in an interview with Russia 1 TV on Sunday. “I think there are reasonable people in the West who understand this. But everything is being dictated by Washington, London, and their satellites inside the EU.” According to the minister, it is Poland and the Baltic States – Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – that are “executing on the ground the aim set by the US to weaken Russia, deliver it a strategic defeat.”

Some in the West “are already discussing ‘decolonization’ of Russia, meaning the dismembering of our country,” Lavrov said, warning that “this is playing with fire. There can be no doubts about that.” “I hope reasonable people will step away from unconditional support for the neo-Nazi regime that the West itself created,” he added. The foreign minister suggested that the words of the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who acknowledged earlier this week that “in the near term,” Ukraine will not be able to recapture the territories it lost to Russia, were a “step forward to understanding the reality on the ground.” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been pressing his Western backers for F-16 warplanes for months, arguing they are crucial for defending Ukrainian airspace amid Russia’s missile campaign targeting military facilities and energy infrastructure.

At the G20 summit last week, US President Biden Joe Biden said that Washington would support efforts by the UK, the Netherlands, and other European countries to train Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated at the event that the US “will work with our allies to determine when planes will be delivered, who will be delivering them, and how many.” Several outlets reported that the jets will not be provided by the US, but that the Biden administration would instead allow its allies to transfer their F-16s to Kiev. Moscow has repeatedly warned that deliveries of more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine by the US and its allies could cross its ‘red lines’, leading to a major spike in the hostilities. Russia has said that the provision of arms, intelligence sharing, and training to Kiev’s troops makes Western nations de facto parties to the conflict.

They will get maybe 50. Russia has 1,000 better jets.

• F-16s For Ukraine Won’t Be A Game Changer – Bloomberg (RT)

While potential Western deliveries of US-designed F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will help enhance Kiev’s combat capabilities, they won’t be a “game changer” in its conflict with Russia, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing several pilots who had flown the aircraft. According to the agency, the F-16s that could be sent to Ukraine “will still have inferior radar and shorter range missiles” than many of Russia’s modern aircraft and air defense systems. This means that those planes will either be deployed defensively, or used as part of high-risk operations, the report says. Brynn Tannehill, who designed simulators for the planes, told the outlet that for Ukrainian pilots switching from Soviet-era aircraft over to F-16s would be as if “they pushed the easy button.” However, “you can’t overcome the laws of physics,” she added.

According to John Venable, a former F-16 pilot with the US Air Force, should Ukrainians fly close to the front line, they would receive a signal that they had been detected by Russian radars long before they would be in position to fire on their targets. He added that Ukrainian pilots may use hilly terrain to sidestep detection – and thus destruction – while approaching their targets, but they would have to quickly climb at a steep angle, shoot, and then duck for cover again. However, such tactics mean that the F-16s “aren’t going to be hitting anything,” Venable said. Moreover, according to Dan Hampton, another veteran combat pilot, it would also be impractical to use F-16s to shoot down Russian cruise missiles, as there would only be a small window after the projectile is fired and detected but before it reaches its target.

Deployment of F-16s in this capacity would require them to stay in the air for hours while waiting for the right moment, he explained. The pilots’ assessment echoes a statement by US Air Force chief Frank Kendall, who said earlier this month that F-16 deliveries would not mark a turning point in the Ukraine conflict, given that air power has not played a crucial role in the hostilities. However, Yury Ignat, the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, has insisted that Kiev “will win this war” if it were to receive modern Western jets. Commenting on potential F-16s deliveries to Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that such a move would lead to “an unacceptable escalation” of the conflict.

The value of a US passport.

• State Department Won’t Say If It’s Working to Free Gonzalo Lira (Antiwar)

The State Department has refused to say if it’s engaging with the Ukrainian government over American citizen Gonzalo Lira, who was detained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) due to his political views on the conflict with Russia.Lira has a popular YouTube channel and a large following on Twitter and Telegram. He is also a writer who has contributed to several media outlets, including Business Insider. Lira was born in California and is a dual citizen of the US and Chile and had been living in Kharkiv, Ukraine, throughout the war.Lira is a critic of the Ukrainian government and was arrested by the SBU on charges of justifying the Russian invasion. “After the start of the full-scale invasion, the blogger was one of the first to support the Russian invaders and glorify their war crimes,” the SBU said in a press release referring to Lira.

The SBU also accused Lira of “discrediting the top military and political leadership and the Defense Forces of our state.” He was charged under sections 2 and 3 of Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code, which outlaws the “distribution of materials” that justify Russia’s actions going back to 2014. Epoch Times reporter Liam Cosgrove asked State Department spokesman Matthew Miller if the administration was aware of Lira’s detainment and how the US feels about Ukraine arresting an American for speech.“So I will say in general that we’re aware of the report. We obviously support the exercise of freedom of speech anywhere in the world, and I’ll leave it at that,” Miller said.When asked if the administration was working to secure Lira’s release, Miller said, “I’m going to leave my comments where I just left them.”

Cosgrove also asked Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) about Lira’s detainment. Lieu said that he wasn’t aware of the case but said US citizens should “have the ability to express their thoughts and views” and that he would look into the arrest. Responding to the news, Greene told Cosgrove: “America is providing weapons, equipment for the defense of their country, but the Ukrainian government is not going to defend any American’s freedom of speech, and that’s a real problem.” Lira’s arrest received virtually no attention in Western media. One of the few outlets to cover it was the Daily Beast, which smeared the American instead of questioning the charges. According to the Beast, Lira is facing five to eight years in prison.

“..it plans to knock on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and five times in the kickoff Iowa caucuses..”

• DeSantis Superpac Plans To Spend $200 Million In 4 States (CTH)

2,600 people at $15/hr is $39,000 per hour. Anticipating 1,000 hrs per campaign worker, that’s $39 million. At $25/hr that’s $65 million. At $40/hr that’s $104 million. This is the scale of spending that Ken Cuccinelli and Jeff Roe have for the Never Back Down SuperPAC to support Governor Ron DeSantis in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada on behalf of the Sea Island billionaires who want to manipulate the 2024 election. That’s just payroll for new hires. Overall, the New York Times is reporting a campaign support spending plan of more than $200 million. Essentially, these are payments from the billionaire Wall Street donors and multinationals, funneled through the SuperPAC, to influence the ’24 election. The context of the New York Times report sounds accurate.

NYT – “A key political group supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential run is preparing a $100 million voter-outreach push so big it plans to knock on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and five times in the kickoff Iowa caucuses. The effort is part of an on-the-ground organizing operation that intends to hire more than 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day, an extraordinary number of people for even the best-funded campaigns. Top officials with the pro-DeSantis group, a super PAC called Never Back Down, provided their most detailed account yet of their battle plan to aid Mr. DeSantis, whom they believe they can sell as the only candidate to take on — and win — the cultural fights that are definitional for the Republican Party in 2024.

The group said it expected to have an overall budget of at least $200 million, including more than $80 million to be transferred from an old DeSantis state political account, for the daunting task of vaulting the Florida governor past former President Donald J. Trump, who has established himself as the dominant early front-runner. […] “No one has ever contemplated the scale of this organization or operation, let alone done it,” said Chris Jankowski, the group’s chief executive. “This has just never even been dreamed up.” […] At the helm of the DeSantis super PAC is Jeff Roe, a veteran Republican strategist who was Mr. Cruz’s campaign manager in 2016. In an interview, Mr. Roe described an ambitious political apparatus whose 2,600 field organizers by the fall would be roughly double the peak of Senator Bernie Sanders’s entire 2020 primary campaign staff.

“I think it was basically just a middle finger to the American public that this is what they think of you.”

• DeSantis Says He Would Sign Legislation to Defund ‘Corrupt’ IRS (ET)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called IRS a “corrupt organization” and said he would welcome a bill abolishing the agency if elected president in 2024. DeSantis made the comments during an interview with conservative radio host Dana Loesch on May 25, a day after the governor announced his White House bid on Twitter. “If Congress defunded the IRS and sent such a bill like that to your desk, number one, would you sign it?” Loesch asked. “And then what would you replace the system with? Are you for like a fair tax? A flat tax? Where do you stand on that?” “So, the answer’s yes,” DeSantis said in response. “I think the IRS is a corrupt organization and I think it’s not a friend to the average citizen or taxpayer. And so we need something totally different.”

“I’ve supported all of the single rate proposals, I think they would be a huge improvement over the current system,” the governor added. “And I would be welcoming to take this tax system, chunk it out the window, and do something that’s more favorable to the average folks.” The governor has long spoken favorably of a flat tax system. In a Q&A published by Palm Coast Observer in 2012, months before DeSantis won his first term as a House lawmaker from Florida, DeSantis said he believed the federal tax code should be overhauled. “I think the federal tax code is an affront to a free society in the sense that it’s 70,000 pages,” DeSantis stated. “I am in favor of a complete overhaul; my principle is that consumed income should be taxed one time at a low, single, flat rate.He added, “Now whether that’s at the point of after savings and investment income on a flat tax, or on the point of consumption which people talked about a fair tax, I think you need to repeal the 16th Amendment for that because I don’t think you want a sales and an income tax.”

Last year, DeSantis criticized the Biden administration’s nearly $80 billion in funding for the IRS, which Republicans argue would pave the way for the hiring of 87,000 tax agents, as giving a “middle finger to the American public.” The funding to the IRS was part of the Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in August 2022. “I think of all the things that have come out of Washington that have been outrageous, this has got to be pretty close to the top,” DeSantis said at the time. “I think it was basically just a middle finger to the American public that this is what they think of you.” He continued, “All these problems we have to deal with, and they think the way is to do 87,000 IRS agents. There’s going to be more people in the IRS than in a lot of these other agencies combined now.”

“Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “It is difficult to imagine a greater shame for a country than having such senators.”

Russia put Graham on a wanted list this morning.

• Russia Condemns Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Comments on Dead Russians (Antiwar)

Russian officials have condemned Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for calling the US funding of Ukraine the “best money we’ve ever spent” after noting Russians are dying in the conflict. Graham made the comments during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Friday. A video released by the head of Ukraine’s presidential office showed Graham say the “Russians are dying” and then cut to a different angle where the senator said it’s the “best money we’ve ever spent.” It’s not clear from the video if Graham said anything between the two quotes, but the senator has made extremely provocative statements throughout the war. He has called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has said the US should start shooting down Russian planes, an action that could spark World War III.

Responding to Graham’s comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “It is difficult to imagine a greater shame for a country than having such senators.” Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and former president, called Graham an “old fool.” Graham was asked by Reuters to reply to Medvedev’s comments. “Mr. Medvedev, if you want Russians to stop dying in Ukraine, withdraw. Stop the invasion. Stop the war crimes. The truth is that you and Putin could care less about Russian soldiers,” he said. Graham also appeared on Fox News on Sunday and called for the US to send Ukraine whatever it wants, including longer-range weapons and widely-banned cluster munitions.

What a joke.

• Europe’s Largest Air Force Drills Start In Finland, Norway, Sweden (Az.)

Finland, Norway, and Partner Sweden will host the multinational Arctic Challenge Exercise 2023 from May 29 to June 9, 2023, Report informs referring to the NATO website. This year’s Arctic Challenge Exercise (ACE 23) is the sixth of its kind which Finland, Norway, and Sweden have hosted together. The Finnish Air Force is responsible for planning and directing the training event that is conducted every second year since 2013. About 3,000 military and 150 aircraft from the armed forces of 14 countries will take part in the exercises. The Arctic Challenge Exercises is part of the NORDEFCO cooperation between Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Their Air Forces regularly carry out combined air combat-related Cross Border Training operated from their home bases.

Useful for NATO: a powder keg.

• Kosovo PM Dreams Of Becoming New Zelensky – Serbian President (RT)

Tensions in Serbia’s breakaway province of Kosovo may spiral out of control because of the actions of its prime minister, Albin Kurti, warned Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in an interview released on Sunday amid violent clashes between local police and Serb protesters. Speaking to the Serbian TV channel Pink, Vucic said that “the most difficult situation in Kosovo and Metohija is yet to follow. Something we have not seen until now, all thanks to the provocative actions and terribly irresponsible behavior of Albin Kurti.” The Serbian leader went on to say that he was “afraid of general insecurity, instability” and of “big conflicts” in the breakaway province. “I know that this other one [Kurti], who caused everything, doesn’t want to retire for a living, because he longs and dreams of being a [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky,” he added.

Vucic noted that he had been contacted by several European envoys who voiced concern over the ongoing situation in Kosovo, which has been marked by violent clashes between local police and ethnic Serbs, who make up the majority in the northern part of the region. Law enforcement officers fired tear gas in one of the municipalities to disperse protesters who had tried to prevent a newly elected ethnic Albanian mayor from entering his office, resulting in several people being injured. The unrest came after local Serbs mostly boycotted elections in four northern municipalities, which saw a total turnout of just 3.47%, arguing that they would not work with new mayors from ethnic Albanian parties who do not represent their interests.

Amid the clashes, Serbia placed its army on high alert, moving some units closer to the region’s border. Defense Minister Milos Vucevic said that “it is clear that terror against the Serb community in Kosovo is happening.”Meanwhile, a number of Western countries, including the US, France, Italy, Germany, and Britain, issued an unexpectedly harsh public rebuke of Kosovo, condemning the use of force and calling on the local authorities “to immediately step back and de-escalate.” Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 with the support of the US and many of its allies. The breakaway region is not recognized by several countries, including Russia, China, and Serbia itself.

Trying to drive a wedge in between new found friends?

• Saudi Arabia Calls Russia Out Over Oil Output – WSJ (RT)

Saudi Arabia has accused Russia of not entirely fulfilling its pledge to curb oil production in response to Western sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter. Riyadh has reportedly complained to senior Russian officials about the matter and asked Moscow to honor the output cuts of 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) that the two biggest oil producers in the OPEC+ group agreed in April to make.The curbs, which took effect in May and are set to last until the end of 2023, were aimed at supporting global oil prices. The total volume of oil taken off the market was expected to be 1.66 million barrels per day. The decision came as an additional step following the OPEC+ agreement to collectively reduce oil output by 2 million bpd that came into effect in November 2022.

In February, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak said that Russia would voluntarily reduce oil production in March by 500,000 barrels per day as the nation halted sales to buyers that complied with a Western-imposed price cap. The measure was then extended until June, and later until the end of the current year. Since then, the official has reportedly said that Moscow is abiding by its voluntary pledge to cut oil output by 500,000 barrels a day from March until the end of 2023. “Taking into account the unfounded speculation in the press regarding oil production levels, Russia reaffirms its full commitment to and implementation of voluntary oil production cut levels,” Novak said in a statement earlier this month.

Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency had previously reported that Russian oil exports reached a 14-month high in April, with the lion’s share going to Asian markets amid Western sanctions. The report also suggested that Russia hadn’t fully implemented the planned production cuts. The agency estimates that the country’s oil trade revenues amounted to $15 billion in April, an increase of $1.7 billion on the month.

Civil servants with small minds.

• EU Commissioner Reprimands Elon Musk Over Disinfo (RT)

European Commissioner Thierry Breton threatened Twitter CEO Elon Musk with “enforcement” in a tweet on Friday after Musk announced he was pulling Twitter out of the EU’s voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation, warning he was not getting away so easily. Confirming Twitter had left the anti-disinformation body, Breton tweeted, “You can run but you can’t hide,” promising “our teams will be ready for enforcement.” “Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under [the Digital Service Act] as of August 25,” the official reminded Musk, referring to incoming legislation that will require Twitter and seven other social media platforms to “fight disinformation” in the EU or face massive fines as high as 6% of the company’s annual revenue.

Twitter joined the CPD in 2018 under former CEO Jack Dorsey. The DSA incorporates the (voluntary) Code of Practice into a mandatory code of conduct for very large online platforms, arguing they must take responsibility for keeping the internet safe for democracy or face ruinous financial consequences. Twitter has three months to comply with its obligations. While Musk and Breton reportedly saw eye-to-eye regarding Twitter’s implementation of the DSA ahead of the billionaire’s purchase of the platform last year, Breton warned the Tesla tycoon that Twitter faced “huge work ahead” to comply with EU regulations after the deal was completed in November, demanding he significantly beef up content moderation and “tackle disinformation with resolve.”

As of February, Twitter was still falling short of Breton’s expectations, reportedly receiving a warning from EU officials following a poor performance evaluation on the CPD accompanied by complaints that the platform “didn’t take it seriously enough.” Musk has struggled to convince Twitter users of the sincerity of his free speech absolutism since hiring NBCUniversal ad maven and World Economic Forum member Linda Yaccarino as the platform’s new CEO earlier this month. This comes despite his taking a gratuitous swipe at liberal bogeyman and fellow billionaire George Soros and hosting Republican presidential candidate and anti-woke crusader Ron DeSantis’ announcement of entry into the 2024 race. Twitter has complied with 80% of all government takedown requests in the first six months since Musk took over as CEO, a significant increase from the 50% rate that characterized the pre-Musk era.

“He couldn’t be counted on not to carry out a threat to do something crazy, mutually destructive..”

• Kissinger vs. ‘The Most Dangerous Man in America’ (Gosztola)

In 1970, before whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg shared copies of the Pentagon Papers with several newspapers in the United States, Ellsberg was invited by his friend Lloyd Shearer, who was the editor of Parade magazine, to attend a lunch with President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger. Ellsberg recounted the lunch in his book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Kissinger knew Ellsberg from his work at the RAND Corporation, and what Ellsberg recounted is vital to understanding the festering and unrepentant diplomat as the world marks his 100th birthday. The contrast between the two could not be more stark. Ellsberg has spent the past 50-plus years constantly atoning for the part he played in the Vietnam War while Kissinger has shirked accountability for the vast amount of bloodshed that he enabled.

Kissinger’s reaction to Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers exposed more about who he was deep down than his philosophy or any advice he ever offered on U.S. foreign policy. On a small patio, Kissinger was seated with General Alexander Haig, his aide. Kissinger said hello to Ellsberg and Shearer, and he told Shearer, “You know, I have learned more from Dan Ellsberg than from any other person—” Ellsberg believed Kissinger would say “Vietnam,” but Kissinger said “—about bargaining.” That did not make a whole lot of sense to Ellsberg until he remembered the talks that he gave to Kissinger’s seminar at Harvard in 1959. They were part of a lecture series called “The Art of Coercion.” Since that was eleven years ago, Ellsberg responded, “You have a very good memory.”

With a “guttural drawl,” Kissinger added, “They were very good lectures.” “Nice. Except that when I thought about it later, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” Ellsberg shared. “The lectures I had given to his class had had to do with Hitler’s blackmail of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the late thirties that had allowed him to take over those countries just by threatening their destruction.” “One of the talks was titled, “The Theory and Practice of Blackmail,” and the other was “The Political Use of Madness.” Hitler had deliberately cultivated among his adversaries the impression of his own irrational unpredictability.”

Ellsberg continued, “He couldn’t be counted on not to carry out a threat to do something crazy, mutually destructive. It worked for him, up to a point, because he was crazy, madly aggressive, and reckless. But after a certain point it brought the world down around him.” “It wasn’t a tactic I was recommending for the United States, or anyone else, for that matter. Far from it. For someone to imitate Hitler in this respect was to cultivate madness and court disaster,” Ellsberg contended.

Octopus hiding

When marine biologist Roger Hanlon caught this creature on camera, he said he screamed bloody murder. And no wonder. A superb visualization of how chromatophores allow an octopus to blend in with the backdrops

[source, read more: https://t.co/Vp1Uxhq0He]pic.twitter.com/1bp6cWouSN

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 28, 2023

Drawing

very realistic drawing enough to change the course of real life pic.twitter.com/JrTfQmarVm

— Enezator (@Enezator) May 28, 2023

Peacocks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1662823884209397760

Trap
https://twitter.com/i/status/1662828333715931136

In 1958, in Palisades, New Jersey, a performer named Jimmy Armstrong, known as The Dwarf Clown, entertained the audience at Clyde Beatty Circus. This moment was captured by photographer Bruce Davidson as part of his renowned ‘Circus’ series. “He was standing alone outside the tent, smoking a cigarette,” Davidson said upon seeing Armstrong for the first time. Dressed in a tuxedo and a top hat, he held a small bouquet of paper flowers and stood there pensively, immersed in the privacy of his inner thoughts.”

“He seemed to know that it was the inner moment I was drawn to and not his clown face or physical appearance. We became friends, although we seldom spoke to one another.” “I found something in Jimmy that was more than loneliness, it was a story about surviving” – Bruce Davidson.

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Debt Rattle March 16 2023

Mar 162023

March 16, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: Antonov, Biden family, CBDC, Credit Suisse, drone, Druzhba, hacker brigade, Lindsey Graham, SNB 67 Responses »

Pable Picasso Le Pengouin 1907

• Credit Suisse Borrows $54BN From SNB: “Pre-emptively Strengthen Liquidity” (ZH)

• EU Shrugs Off Silicon Valley Bank Collapse (Pol.eu)

• Pentagon Calls Moscow Over Drone Incident (RT)

• US Drones Have No Business Near Russia – Ambassador (RT)

• Drone Incident Confirms US Involvement In Ukraine Conflict – Russia (RT)

• Moscow Responds To Lindsey Graham Threat (RT)

• Attack On Russian Plane In Neutral Airspace A Declaration Of War – Antonov (TASS)

• Antonov Expressed Russia’s Concerns Over US Activities At State Dept (TASS)

• China Comments On ‘Ukrainian Theory’ Of Nord Stream Sabotage (RT)

• Explosive Devices Found At Russian Pipeline – Transneft (RT)

• Ukraine Wants To Legalize Controversial Hacker Brigade (RT)

• How Russian Identity Was Wiped Out In What Is Now Western Ukraine (Plotnikov)

• The Tyrants Are Passing State Laws to Push CBDCs (Thomas Renz)

• GOP Candidates: Pay Attention DC (Denninger)

• Which Biden Family Member Got Cut Of $3M CCP-Linked Wire? (ZH)

RFK Haines
https://twitter.com/i/status/1635831142124339200
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636060053269512194

RFK Fauci

#2 @RobertKennedyJr tells @jimmy_dore: "They took the money that Cheney gave them [from the Patriot Act], $2.2 billion, and they funneled it through NIH, and it all went through Anthony Fauci. So beginning in 2002, Anthony Fauci got a 68% raise from the Pentagon for doing… https://t.co/irKFTrWpon pic.twitter.com/tGHBzbzYCi

— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 15, 2023

Tucker weapons
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636160752867221508

Bosi

Riccardo Bosi: “Vlad's taking down the Deep State”
-> Boom …

PS: Riccardo is a former Australian Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who served in the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, as well as a long-term adviser to the UAE Special Operations Command … THX @rbelcastro2 pic.twitter.com/tTqGsxh5ov

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) March 15, 2023

Macgregor

Mainstrean media finally reporting the truth about Ukraine… and there's more needless killing.
Col Doug Macgregor
see full vid: https://t.co/ALbYoKagyJ pic.twitter.com/5uIWuPxmZs

— Judge Napolitano (@Judgenap) March 15, 2023

Russian warriors

The NAFO trolls are just going to love this video.

A message from the Russians with English narration. pic.twitter.com/8AYL1Fw8rv

— GraphicW (@GraphicW5) March 14, 2023

Credit Suisse is labeled systemically important, aka too big to fail. On Wall Street. But as ZH notes this loan does nothing to halt the depositor flight that made the loan necessary. What happens if someone decides to take the other side of the bet, like Soros did with the Bank of England?

• Credit Suisse Borrows $54BN From SNB: “Pre-emptively Strengthen Liquidity” (ZH)

Update (21:00ET): And so, the “bailout” arrives just a few hours before the Europe open, Credit Suisse said it’s planning to borrow from the Swiss National Bank up to CHF50 billion ($54 billion) under a covered loan facility which is “fully collateralized by high quality assets”. It wasn’t immediately clear what high quality assets CS has left to pledge but in a time of BTFP, we are confident they found something. The bank also announced offers by Credit Suisse International to repurchase certain OpCo senior debt securities for cash of up to about CHF3 billion, which will help the bank pick up a few pennies in bond discount, even as it faces tens of billions in deposit flight.

So to summarize: Credit Suisse effectively just took out a priming DIP loan, pledging its last remaining assets with the SNB, to shore up some $54BN in emergency liquidity, probably how much the bank has seen in deposit outflows. It will be very interesting on what terms those assets were pledged. Another way of saying it, is that this is a last-ditch liquidity infusion, and all it does is prevent forced asset liquidations (a la SVB). Meanwhile it does nothing to halt the depositor flight because once trust is broken, it rarely returns. The news sent Euro Stoxx 50 futures 2% higher, and pushed Emini S&P futures to session highs of 3946; 2Year yields moved up by about 20bps to 4.00% before fading the move.

That said don’t hold your breath for some breathtaking surge: once the market sees though this rescue for what it is – yet another temporary stop gap measure – it will demand much more, especially after the ECB hikes rates tomorrow which this “band-aid bailout” will allow the Central Bank to do, in the process guaranteeing an even bigger bailout down the line.

“..acting as if there’s no crisis can sometimes be all part of the game to reassure the markets..”

• EU Shrugs Off Silicon Valley Bank Collapse (Pol.eu)

The failure over the weekend of America’s Silicon Valley Bank, which had assets of $200 billion, has prompted fears of wider meltdown, with share prices plummeting and U.S. agencies scrambling to contain the fallout and prevent runs on other lenders. In the European Union, it’s very definitely seen as something that’s happening to other people. “At the EU level, there is very limited presence of Silicon Valley Bank,” Valdis Dombrovskis, executive vice president of the European Commission, said Tuesday. “We are in touch with the relevant competent authorities, but we don’t expect much of a spillover effect.” His was just the latest in a series of chilled-out comments from leading EU figures as they looked on while the financial blowup raged.

“I don’t see any risk of contagion,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Monday. “We are monitoring the situation but there is no specific alert.” EU bank stocks slumped 5.84 percent on Monday in response to the demise of SVB — but rallied on Tuesday, closing back up 2.46 percent. Aside from the immediate risks of contagion, the big question is whether SVB is an idiosyncratic event or a sign of broader ailments at banks. European leaders are firmly playing things down, stressing the difficulties were unique. “The problems arise from the specific business model of the Silicon Valley Bank, and the picture here in Europe is very different,” said Paschal Donohoe, president of the Eurogroup, the gathering of eurozone finance ministers, after their latest meeting on Monday.

Of course, acting as if there’s no crisis can sometimes be all part of the game to reassure the markets. So when the EU says “nothing to see here,” those in the know — particularly those who lived through the financial turmoil a decade and a half ago — may wonder whether actually they’re just hoping that if they say it loudly enough it will become true.

It’s good that they talk. They should do more of that. Much more.

• Pentagon Calls Moscow Over Drone Incident (RT)

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reached out to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu, on Wednesday, for the first time in months, to discuss the incident in which an American spy drone went down in the Black Sea waters off Crimea. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Shoigu told Austin that the incident was caused by the Americans violating the airspace restriction declared by Russia, with all the proper international notifications in place. Shoigu called US drone flights off the Russian coast “provocative in nature” and risked an escalation of tensions in the Black Sea. While Russia does not desire such a development, it will “continue to respond proportionately to all provocations,” Shoigu said. He added that the two nuclear powers “must act as responsibly as possible,” which includes keeping a military channel open to discuss any crisis.

Speaking at a Pentagon press briefing, Austin confirmed that he made the call, and said it was “important that great powers be models of transparency and communication.” However, he insisted the US would “continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows.” The last time Shoigu and Austin spoke was in October 2022, according to AP. The top military officers also had a phone call about the matter, with US General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reaching out to his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov. On Tuesday, the US European Command claimed that two Russian Su-27 jets conducted an “an unsafe and unprofessional intercept” of a MQ-9 Reaper drone, which was conducting an intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) mission in international waters over the Black Sea.

According to the US military, one of the planes struck the drone’s propeller, causing the operators to ditch the UAV into the water. The Russian Defense Ministry, however, said that at no point did any of the interceptors make contact with the drone, or use their on-board weapons. The UAV stalled and crashed after executing an abrupt maneuver, Moscow said. Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said he told the State Department that US drones have no business so close to the Russian border. The drone was reportedly just 60 kilometers off the coast of Crimea when it crashed.

The US has flown drones and other surveillance aircraft near the Russian border for over a year, providing intelligence and targeting information to the Ukrainian government – along with weapons, ammunition and money – while insisting it is not a party to the conflict. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, said on Wednesday that the drone incident was “yet another confirmation” the US was directly involved.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov is the de facto spokesperson for Moscow on the issue.

• US Drones Have No Business Near Russia – Ambassador (RT)

Moscow regards Tuesday’s incident in which an American drone crashed in the Black Sea as a provocation, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said after being summoned to the State Department in Washington. Antonov met with Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried, who protested the “unsafe and unprofessional intercept” of the drone that resulted in its loss. “We consider this incident a provocation,” Antonov told reporters after the meeting. He said he told Donfried that US drones, planes and ships had no business being that close to Russian borders. “Could you imagine what the reaction of the US media or the Pentagon would be, if such a drone would appear near New York or San Francisco?” he asked.

Antonov described the talks with Donfried as “constructive” and said both sides shared their concerns. The US and Russia need to be “extremely cautious” how they act, given the current situation in Eastern Europe, he added. He also told Donfried that Moscow is seeking “pragmatic relations” and not conflict with the US. According to the US military, two Russian Su-27 interceptors flew dangerously close to the MQ-9 Reaper drone on Tuesday morning, spilling fuel on the drone and at one point damaging its propeller, causing the UAV to crash. The drone, they said, was on a peaceful surveillance mission in international waters. In response, the Russian Defense Ministry said the UAV stalled after executing drastic maneuvers, and that the interceptors “did not come into contact with the UAV.”

Antonov had pointed out that the drone was of a type that can carry multiple missiles and bombs. The MQ-9 was developed as a “hunter-killer” variant of the MQ-1 Predator. The US has flown drones and surveillance planes near the Russian border for over a year, providing intelligence and targeting information to the Ukrainian government – along with weapons, ammunition and money – while insisting it is not a party to the conflict. The exact location of the incident was not provided by either government. Russian media have reported that the Reaper’s last location was about 60 kilometers southwest of the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

US aircraft shouldn’t be flying near Russian border , imagine Washington’s reaction if foreign military aircraft appeared near New York or San Francisco – Russian Ambassador to US Antonov on American drone that crashed in Black Sea. pic.twitter.com/VG2HPQNobu

— sonja van den ende (@SonjaEnde) March 15, 2023

“..Russian fighters did not use any airborne weapons and did not come into contact with the drone..”

• Drone Incident Confirms US Involvement In Ukraine Conflict – Russia (RT)

Moscow will attempt to recover the wreckage of the American MQ-9 Reaper drone that fell into the Black Sea on Tuesday, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, has announced. Speaking live on a Russian federal channel on Wednesday, the official admitted that he doesn’t know if it will be possible to get to the remains of the UAV but stressed that it was important to make an effort to find and study the wreckage. Patrushev also added that “Americans keep saying that they are not participating in the hostilities” in Ukraine and that this latest incident with the drone is “yet another confirmation that [the US] are directly involved” in the ongoing military conflict.

The secretary’s statement comes after Washington’s European Command (EUCOM) reported that one of its MQ-9 Reaper drones was brought down over the Black Sea on Tuesday morning as a result of “unsafe and unprofessional” actions by two Russian Su-27 fighter jets. The Pentagon insists that one of the Russian interceptors had “struck the propeller” of the drone while it was conducting a reconnaissance mission in international airspace. The Russian Defense Ministry has denied claims that its planes came into contact with the American drone, but reported that Aerospace Forces had recorded the flight of an American UAV over the Black Sea towards the Russian border and dispatched two interceptors to investigate.

The ministry noted that the aircraft was flying with transponders turned off and in violation of the temporary air borders established around the ongoing military operation area in Ukraine. At some point, “as a result of sharp maneuvers” the drone went into “uncontrolled flight” and crashed into the sea, the ministry reported, noting that Russian fighters did not use any airborne weapons and did not come into contact with the drone. US National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby has since stated that the US is taking all the necessary measures to ensure that the remains of the MQ-9 Reaper drone do not fall into anyone else’s hands.

“It’s the United States’ property. We obviously don’t want to see anybody getting their hands on it beyond us,” Kirby told CNN. However, he also admitted that he’s not sure if the US will be able to recover the aircraft, because it fell into “very very deep water” in the Black Sea. “We’re still assessing whether there can be any kind of recovery effort. There may not be.”

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636060425417629697

“it is not the Russian pilots who should be called out,” but rather American politicians, “who are inciting the start of an apocalyptic conflict.”

• Moscow Responds To Lindsey Graham Threat (RT)

Russia’s ambassador to the US has accused Senator Lindsey Graham of provoking “dangerous escalation” between the two countries, after the senior lawmaker urged the Pentagon to fire on Russian fighter jets. Asked about Graham’s comments on Wednesday, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said the senator’s call to shoot down Russian aircraft went “far beyond common sense” and risked all-out war between the world’s largest nuclear powers. “This is by no means the first attempt by the notorious lawmaker to provoke a dangerous escalation in the US-Russian relations. A year ago he urged our citizens to make an assassination attempt on the president of Russia,” he said. “Does Senator Graham really believe that a direct military clash with Russia is in the interests of the voters who entrusted him with their lives and livelihood?” “Is the Capitol willing to put American citizens and the international community at risk of a full-scale nuclear war? Give us an answer, distinguished Senator!”

Graham appeared on Fox News earlier on Wednesday to discuss a recent close encounter between Russian fighter jets and a US MQ-9 Reaper drone near Crimea, calling for a tough response from President Joe Biden after the UAV was sent plunging into the Black Sea. “What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would start shooting Russian planes down, if they were threatening our assets,” Graham told the outlet, referring to the US leader who served at the height of Cold War brinkmanship with the Soviet Union. While US officials claimed one of the Russian planes collided with the drone and caused it to crash, the Russian Defense Ministry said the unmanned vehicle went down after stalling, and never came into contact with another aircraft. Antonov went on to argue that Moscow “did everything possible to prevent this kind of incident,” including informing the international community “in good time about the boundaries of the temporary airspace regime” established in the area.

While the ambassador said it is a “shame for the Pentagon to lose an expensive piece of equipment,” he insisted “it is not the Russian pilots who should be called out,” but rather American politicians, “who are inciting the start of an apocalyptic conflict.” Washington has flown drones and surveillance craft near the Russian border on a near-constant basis over the last year, providing intelligence – along with weapons, ammunition and money – to the Ukrainian government even as it insists it is not a party to the conflict. The exact location of this week’s drone encounter was not confirmed by either government, though Russian news outlets have reported that the Reaper’s last location was about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southwest of the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

“Russia did everything possible to prevent this kind of incident – it informed the international community in good time about the boundaries of the temporary airspace regime established for the special military operation.”

• Attack On Russian Plane In Neutral Airspace A Declaration Of War – Antonov (TASS)

A deliberate attack on a Russian aircraft in neutral airspace would be an open declaration of war against the largest nuclear power, Moscow is not seeking confrontation, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said on Wednesday. “Some lawmakers’ calls go far beyond common sense,” he said, commenting on US Senator Lindsey Graham’s (from South Karolina) threats to shoot down Russian planes approaching US aircraft in international airspace. “The Russian Ministry of Defense has explained in detail the reasons and course of actions of Russian pilots during yesterday’s incident over the Black Sea. I repeat, for those who have not gathered themselves to look at the situation objectively: our fighters did not come into contact with the American UAV,” he said, commenting on the loss of a MQ-9 American drone. “Russia did everything possible to prevent this kind of incident – it informed the international community in good time about the boundaries of the temporary airspace regime established for the special military operation.”

“Of course, it is a shame for the Pentagon to lose expensive piece of equipment. But in this case, the US military should redirect accusations of unprofessional actions back to themselves,” he noted. “As for the aforementioned senator, this is by no means the first attempt by the notorious lawmaker to provoke a dangerous escalation in the US-Russian relations. A year ago he urged our citizens to make an assassination attempt on the president of Russia. Does Senator Graham really believe that a direct military clash with Russia is in the interests of the voters who entrusted him with their lives and livelihood?” the Russian ambassador noted. “A deliberate attack on a Russian aircraft in neutral airspace is not just a crime under international law, but an open declaration of war against the largest nuclear power. An armed conflict between Russia and the United States would be radically different from the proxy war the Americans are waging remotely against us in Ukraine,” Antonov warned. “Is the Capitol willing to put American citizens and the international community at risk of a full-scale nuclear war? Give us an answer, distinguished Senator!”

“It is not the Russian pilots who should be called out, but American politicians who are inciting the start of an apocalyptic conflict. We do not seek a conflict with a nuclear power. We continue to maintain contacts, including through the Defense Ministry, to prevent unintentional incidents. I wish US politicians had the same attitude toward relations with Russia,” the Russian diplomat stressed. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, Russian airspace control systems detected an American MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle flying near the Crimean Peninsula on Tuesday. The drone flew with its transponders turned off, violating a temporary boundary established for the special military operation, communicated to all users of international airspace, and published in accordance with international standards.

Russia’s top brass added that as a result of sharp maneuvering, the drone went into uncontrolled flight before losing altitude and crashing into the Black Sea. The ministry stressed that Russian fighter jets had not used on-board weapons, nor had they come into contact with the unmanned aerial vehicle, and returned safely to their home airfield. According to the US European Command, one of the two Russian Su-27 warplanes hit the drone’s propeller to make it crash into the Black Sea. MQ-9 Reaper is a modular reconnaissance and strike unmanned aerial vehicle engineered by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. It is equipped with a turboprop engine and can develop a speed of more than 400 kilometer per hour. The maximal flight duration is 24 hours. The drone is capable of carrying air-to-surface and air-to-air missiles, and laser-guided bombs.

More talk. Also good.

• Antonov Expressed Russia’s Concerns Over US Activities At State Dept (TASS)

Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov disclosed that he discussed Russia’s concerns regarding various aspects of Washington’s activities during the meeting in the US Department of State after the incident involving a US drone in the Black Sea. “Yesterday, I was invited to the Department of State, where I had a 30-minute conversation with Assistant Secretary of State [for European and Eurasian Affairs] Karen Donfried. Notably, we talked for 15 minutes about this particular story, and 15 more minutes – about Russia’s concerns regarding various aspects of activities of the United States of America,” he said on Russian TV Wednesday. According to Antonov, the conversation was calm. “It felt like my colleague simply read out a document that she had before her eyes,” he noted.

The envoy underscored that he categorically rejected all accusations of the American side towards the Russian Armed Forces. Previously, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Russian Aerospace Forces detected a US MQ-9 drone flying near the Crimean Peninsula. The drone was reportedly flying with its transponder turned off and “in violation of the boundaries of the temporary airspace use area, defined in order to carry out the special military operation, which has been conveyed to all airspace users and published in accordance to the international norms.” The Defense Ministry added that the drone’s abrupt maneuvering caused it to lose control, lose altitude and crash into the water. Russian jet fighters did not use its weapons and did not collide with the drone, and successfully returned to their bases, the Ministry said.

“We have noted that some Western media have been mysteriously quiet after Hersh reported that the US was behind the Nord Stream blast. But now these media are unusually simultaneous in making their voice heard. How would the US account for such abnormality?”

• China Comments On ‘Ukrainian Theory’ Of Nord Stream Sabotage (RT)

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin found it unusual that major outlets in the West uncritically embraced the claim by unnamed US officials that a “pro-Ukrainian group” was responsible for the bombing of Nord Stream natural gas pipelines. At the press briefing on Wednesday, Wang described the pipelines as “vital cross-border infrastructure projects,” whose destruction had a “serious impact on the global energy market and ecological environment.” China wants “an objective, impartial and professional investigation” into the bombing and those responsible held to account, the sooner the better, he added.

Asked to comment on the so-called “Ukrainian theory,” first put forth by anonymous US officials in the New York Times last week, Wang noted the sudden change of behavior by Western media, after they spent a month ignoring the report by journalist Seymour Hersh that blamed the US and Norway. “We have noted that some Western media have been mysteriously quiet after Hersh reported that the US was behind the Nord Stream blast. But now these media are unusually simultaneous in making their voice heard. How would the US account for such abnormality? Is there anything hidden behind the scene?” Wang said. Nord Stream 1 and 2, pipelines built under the Baltic Sea to carry Russian natural gas to Germany and onward to Western Europe, were damaged in a series of explosions in September 2022.

In early February, Hersh published a report detailing how Washington had the pipelines destroyed, describing how US divers planted the explosives and a Norwegian airplane sent the detonation signal. The US government denied all accusations, labeling Hersh’s report “utterly false and complete fiction,” while Russia and China called for an independent and transparent investigation. The Times report quoted unnamed US officials who suggested that the saboteurs were “most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two,” citing unspecified new intelligence. The anonymous officials insisted no US or British nationals were involved, and that there was no evidence President Vladimir Zelensky or any other Ukrainian official directed the attack, either. Kiev has officially denied any responsibility for the Nord Stream blasts.

When he was shown the Times article during an interview, Hersh laughed and asked “Are they that stupid?” referring to the outlet’s anonymous sources. Nonetheless, the story was dutifully repeated by all major Western outlets. Russian president Vladimir Putin was likewise unconvinced. During an interview with Rossiya-1 on Tuesday, he dismissed as “complete nonsense” the notion that non-state actors could be behind the complex act of sabotage. The attacks could have only been “carried out by specialists, and supported by the entire power of a state possessing certain technologies,” he said.

Not Nord Stream, but Druzhba. “..the devices were found in destroyed plastic cases of “non-industrial production” with a striking warhead in the form of steel balls..”:

• Explosive Devices Found At Russian Pipeline – Transneft (RT)

Workers at the Russian oil pipeline transport company Transneft have reportedly found several explosive devices at the Novozybkov oil-pumping station of its Druzhba pipeline in the Bryansk region near Ukraine, according to company spokesperson Igor Demin. Speaking to TASS, he stated that on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday morning, the devices were found in destroyed plastic cases of “non-industrial production” with a striking warhead in the form of steel balls. “Presumably, the destruction of the cases occurred after hitting the ground when falling from drones,” Demin suggested. He added that on Wednesday afternoon another explosive device was seen being dropped from a UAV, “likely similar to the other two [devices].”

At the same time, the Transneft representative pointed out that the Novozybkov pumping station had not been in operation throughout 2023 and that its reserve tanks are empty. Demin added that, given the steel balls found in the explosives, the perpetrators of the sabotage likely did not intend to destroy the facility but instead wanted to kill members of the civilian personnel working at the Druzhba station.The spokesperson noted that an investigation is currently underway and that nobody at the Novozybkov facility had been injured. The Druzhba (Friendship) oil pipeline is one of the longest in the world and connects eastern parts of Russia to several points in Europe, including Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Germany. However, the pipeline has repeatedly come under attack from Kiev’s forces since Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine.

The last attack was reported on February 1, when Demin stated that a missile had landed on the territory of the Novozybkov station but ultimately failed to cause any damage or to injure any of the workers. On February 3, another attack was reported by media outlet Mash, but Transneft said it had no information on the alleged incident and that the pipeline was working normally. The pipeline segment that is apparently being targeted by Ukraine is located some 39 kilometers from the border with Russia and leads in the direction of Belarus, where it branches off into two sections, one going to Germany and Poland and the other to Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic.

Maybe they can take the place of the Orthodox church.

• Ukraine Wants To Legalize Controversial Hacker Brigade (RT)

Ukraine is drafting a law to legalize its controversial hacker brigade, turning an international pro-Ukrainian “hacktivist” group into a “cyber-reserve” military unit, Newsweek confirmed with a state official in an article published on Tuesday. Secretary of Ukraine’s National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity Natalia Tkachuk told Newsweek that a law regulating the “creation and functioning of cyber forces” was being fast tracked at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. She added that this new law would be the “basis for building the state’s cyber defense capabilities, engaging cyber volunteers in these activities, and creating a cyber reserve.” Kiev currently has a volunteer hacker brigade called ‘the IT Army of Ukraine’, which it wants to take out of the legal gray area and incorporate into the armed forces in an official capacity.

The IT Army calls itself a “worldwide IT community” that represents President Vladimir Zelensky’s team and is “the supreme power in Ukraine, capable [of blocking] over 800 targets simultaneously.” They invite anyone with a phone to join and help launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Russian online services, where they flood the sites with internet traffic and cause an outage. The group has claimed responsibility for crashing various Russian sites, including bringing down media websites during Vladimir Putin’s State of the Nation address last month. The IT Army has also been criticized for targeting civilian facilities, including hospitals, in their attacks, according to Newsweek. The report claims that a representative of the group has welcomed the decision to legalize their efforts, even if it meant dissolving the existing IT Army to transform into an official army unit.

This comes as Russia and Belarus signed a new digital safety agreement earlier this month to “increase the protection of the information infrastructure” and “combat destructive influences on the information resources” of the two states. At the same time, many Western outlets are issuing warnings on alleged Russian cyber warfare. Most recently, CNN said on Wednesday that Russian hackers were targeting European military and transport organizations, citing a Microsoft report. Similarly, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told Funke media group last month that Moscow’s hackers were a “massive danger” to Berlin.

Orthodox

A message from monks of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra who Zelensky is expelling on 29 March:

"We are Christian, we are Orthodox and we are not afraid of anybody or anything. We will be here until the end…We did nothing against our Church. We did nothing against our country, our Ukraine" pic.twitter.com/MZRiD3Rhgx

— the Lemniscat (@theLemniscat) March 15, 2023

A gruesome history piece.

• How Russian Identity Was Wiped Out In What Is Now Western Ukraine (Plotnikov)

Galicia, a historical region in the West of Ukraine, is currently the center of the country’s nationalist movement. However, things were once very different. A little over a hundred years ago, representatives of opposing Russophile and pro-Ukrainian political movements competed for the loyalty of the local Ruthenian population, also known as Rusyns. Galicia’s Russophiles welcomed the beginning of the First World War as a step toward an anticipated reunion with Russia. However the Ukrainian movement remained loyal to Austria-Hungary. With the help of the latter, Vienna killed off the Rusyn intelligentsia, which it considered a “fifth column”. To accomplish this, the Hapsburgs set up concentration camps. What happened next amounted to a genocide.

By the start of the First World War, the Russophile movement in Galicia was experiencing tough times. As a result of the “divide and rule” policy implemented by the Austrians, the movement suffered a split. The oldest and most respected organizations ended up in the hands of pro-Austrian leaders who advocated Ukrainian, not Rusyn, identity. After the army of the Russian Empire crossed the border on August 18, 1914, and launched an offensive in Galicia, mass repressions swept through the region. People fell victim to the rage of the Austrian authorities over trifling matters – like possessing Russian literature, being a member of a Russian society, having a Russian education, or just sympathizing with Saint Petersburg. In some cases, people were arrested just for calling themselves Russians. Prisons were full of “enemies of the state” and “dangerous Moscow agents”, and the streets were lined with gallows.

“Those suspected of ‘Russophilia’ were hung on these trees in front of the windows. People were hung right on the trees. They would hang there for a day, then would be taken off and others would take their place… ” recounted one of the peasants in the Gorodetsky district. The repressions primarily affected the intelligentsia and Orthodox priests, most of whom completed spiritual studies in the Russian Empire. Repressions against the intelligentsia were followed by those against the general public. Anyone who was thought to sympathize with Russia or Russian culture became a suspect. This included people who had once visited Russia, read Russian newspapers, or were just known as “Russophiles.” Military courts worked around the clock and a simplified procedure of legal proceedings was introduced for cases of suspected treason.

Renz spreads his wings beyond COVID.

• The Tyrants Are Passing State Laws to Push CBDCs (Thomas Renz)

For those that are living under a rock (or that have more interesting things to do than follow monetary policy) CBDC stands for Central Bank Digital Currency and it, along with gene therapy jabs, stands as the greatest threat to freedom on the planet. Digital currency is completely trackable and completely controllable. This means that the government and any corporation with the proper access will be able to know exactly how you spend every digital penny of your money. It also means that the government (or possibly global governments or global corporations) would have the ability to control what you spend your money on. Spend too much on gas they take some of your money for emitting too many greenhouse gases. Want to buy a gun… forget it.

If you think this sounds terrible you are not alone, nearly no one wants this. That means it is quite literally politically impossible to legislate CBDC into existence at the moment. Despite that, the control available to the many tyrants at the WEF, CCP, etc. is too tempting to resist so they are doing everything possible to leverage their control over the crooks like Biden and the many ignorant elected officials in our government to make it a reality. So, the question is, how are they doing it?

If COVID taught us anything it was that an emergency, real or faked, facilitates a lot of things that would never happen otherwise. The tyrants know this and are in the process of creating financial emergencies that will allow them to argue that there is no alternative but to implement CBDCs. The Biden Administration is implementing policy after policy that devalues the American dollar by limiting Americas ability to mine its own resources or produce its own goods while printing endless money. This will (or more likely is) facilitate an economic collapse. Meanwhile, WEF/CCP partner groups like Black Rock and Vanguard are leveraging their positions as major stakeholders in small and midsized banks to force the banks to accept terrible ESG and other risky investments that will, when combined with the inflation/devalued dollar and scarce resources, result in their collapse. This is an obvious thing to anyone that truly understands the inner-workings of banking (I ran a credit union for a number of years, was a compliance expert, and was involved in a number of national-level groups/projects).

Along with the effort to collapse the dollar and our banking system, the tyrants are also pushing legislation that can allow CBDCs to exist legally and without competition. This is being done in a VERY sneaky way because of the massive political opposition to anything CBDC-related. At this point, the major focus is on passing state-level legislation – particularly in a number of key RED states. Bills are being pushed that appear innocuous but are written to create a check-mate situation when CBDCs come into play. That way these red states won’t be able to oppose it.

BBC vaxx doc

BBC UNVACCINATED DOCUMENTARY – With all of the news that’s coming out regarding risks from the C O V I D V A X, I thought I would bring back my greatest achievement: Being one of the first people to warn the public about the risks and harms from the V A X on mainstream media,… https://t.co/RwvIQSxKhu pic.twitter.com/8aRONZsgmh

— Nazarin Veronica (@nazarinveronica) March 15, 2023

“That’s madness, and in a world of nuclear hellfire madness can indeed lead to you glowing in the dark..”

• GOP Candidates: Pay Attention DC (Denninger)

Yes, Russia may be a nation with a modest GDP that exports black goo to the world in order to stay alive but it is a nation with a modest GDP that exports black goo and happens to have many thousands of nuclear devices on the business end of missiles and torpedoes both on land and sea. If sufficiently threatened with political extinction I would expect them to use those rather than die in peace and if you don’t you’re more than a bit crazy. Those (like Pence) who think Russia is the schoolyard bully who threatens but doesn’t have a pistol under his jacket are even more-insane. He knows the weapons are real, of course, as does everyone else, and for anyone to believe that a sovereign nation will simply fold to an outside influence rather than use whatever they have when facing their own political extinction due to said outside influence is to be imbued with a God Complex that should, in a Representative Republic, be an instant and permanent disqualifier from any high office in this land.

Why? Because if you believe this then you must acquiesce under the principle of “All humans are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights” to extend to those other nations and if it is our place to tell them what is “acceptable” in a government and remove by force those who deem not to be then the exact same principle applies to those other nations. In other words if you hold this principle then you are endorsing Putin assassinating not just the present government (all of said government, including Congress, the Justices of the Supreme Court and the Executive) but also yourself ex-ante before the election! Oh this “right”, which you arrogate to yourself and the United States, does not just extend to Putin. It also extends to Xi, never mind every other leader of every other nation. That’s madness, and in a world of nuclear hellfire madness can indeed lead to you glowing in the dark. We would be wise to reject that with finality.

I’m getting curious: just how careless did the family become? There are 5 of them, and they all like money. I would like to know more, though, about the “two individuals tied to the Chinese Communist Party”. What ties?

• Which Biden Family Member Got Cut Of $3M CCP-Linked Wire? (ZH)

Washington DC is abuzz with speculation over which Biden family member got a cut of a $3 million wire transfer to Hunter Biden associate John “Rob” Walker, just weeks after Joe Biden was no longer Vice President in 2017.According to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) – who last week said that evidence of CCP money flowing to the Biden family was “as bad as we thought,” – revealed that bank records obtained via a subpoena have implicated a “new Biden family member” in the ongoing investigation into the first family’s finances. Comer told Fox News that Walker received a $3 million wire from two individuals tied to the Chinese Communist Party, which he then divvied up between Biden family members.

“The very next day after that wire was received, the Walker account started transferring money into three different Biden family members’ accounts, including a new Biden family member that’s never before been identified as someone being involved in the influence-peddling scheme,” Comer told host Sean Hannity (as part of several recent interviews on the network). According to Comer, GOP investigators are curious about what work Biden family members performed in exchange for the money Walker disbursed. Comer added that the $3 million wire transfer was “just the first wire that we’ve actually been able to obtain bank records on. There are many, many more.”

“The media says, ‘Well, this is a Hunter Biden investigation.’ This is an investigation of Joe Biden. And we’re investigating the Biden family and again, after this new batch of information, it expands,” Comer told “America’s Newsroom.” “There are more family members involved in this than just the president’s son. And what they’ve said in the media, ‘Oh, this was for business.’ We can’t identify any business. It appears it went into their personal account,” Comer continued, adding that he thinks that the Biden family was running an influence-peddling operation as unregistered foreign agents. “In his 2020 book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” investigative journalist Peter Schweizer highlighted four Biden family members in addition to Hunter who have apparently profited off their family name, as well as the connections Joe Biden has made during his nearly 50 years in politics.

Schweizer highlighted first brother James Biden’s work with HillStone International, a subsidiary of construction management firm Hill International. James Biden, according to Schweizer, joined the firm as an executive vice president just three weeks after HillStone International president Kevin Justice visited the White House in November 2010 and met with an adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.” -NY Post So, everything they accused the Trump family of doing?

A little-known feature of Russia is that it has an extensive inland waterway system, known as the Unified Deep Water System of European Russia. The system links the Baltic, Black, Azov, White and Caspian seas together. Russian warships and submarines, up to a certain class (kilo-class for submarines), can theoretically access the Black Sea via this system, bypassing Turkey and the Montreux Convention.

Gates Epstein
https://twitter.com/i/status/1636159977147572224

Hawk

A red-tailed hawk stabilizing its head to stay focused on prey as it hovers in gusting winds.

Credit: Bill Bryantpic.twitter.com/suL0PcGmyN

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) March 15, 2023

Sleepy friends
https://twitter.com/i/status/1635999489684127746

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